


The Art of Sublimating

by ClockworkCourier



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst and Humor, Eventual Romance, Ghosts, M/M, Multi, Past Character Death, Roommates, Slow Build, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 22:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1242949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Technically, in the state of New York, it's illegal to sell property if the seller knows it's haunted. Jason's not sure if that law extends to Manhattan apartments, but if it does, there's a real estate agent out there who is on top of his 'people I might sue someday' list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alriiiight! My first PJO/HoO fic and I'm pretty psyched! I've been toying with a couple writing ideas for over a month now, and this seems to be the one that worked out the best. 
> 
> Quick rundown: Nico the Friendly Ghost and Jason the Surprised-but-Accepting Tenant and all the shenanigans and subsequent dramas that come with being them.
> 
> And yes, there is actually a law where house sellers have to indicate whether a house is haunted or not. Further research leads to the pretty amusing case of Stambovsky vs Ackley in 1991. In short, poor Jason.
> 
> So yeah, enjoy! ;w; This was really fun to write already and I'm definitely looking forward to writing more.
> 
> EDIT (3/2/14): Changed to past tense. Honestly, it felt way more comfortable (and I had written like half of the second chapter in past tense without realizing it).

Central Park was a flourish of emerald in the afternoon sun. Jason watched as the trees waved gently in the breeze, grinned a little at the sight of a girl following her mother but making detours to try to catch pigeons, contented himself with watching the faintest glimmer of the summer sun off the water that he could see through the greenery. It was calming, and it was a far better view than the brick-and-window pattern he usually woke up to.   
  
Then, something hit him between the eyes, so he blinked and looked down to see a french fry sitting inconspicuously on the table. He blinked again and looked up at an agitated Piper who had another fry at the ready.  
  
“Were you even _listening_ to me?” she asked, more accusation than actual question.  
  
“Something about apartments and the internet?” he replied, sheepishness seeping into his tone.   
  
She groaned in frustration and took it out on the fry by biting it in half. Jason responded by stuffing five into his mouth at once.  
  
“Like I was saying before you went off to La La Land,” she started, her iPhone in her free hand and her thumb swiping against the screen. “There’s actually some affordable apartments in the area. Like, maybe half of what you’re paying now?”  
  
He raised an eyebrow in suspicion. “And the deposits?”  
  
Predictably, Piper went quiet and busied herself by taking a sip of her soda.  
  
“Ah, therein lies the problem,” he said in his best New York-savvy voice. Funny, considering he was from California, but the city definitely grew on him. “It’s Manhattan. Deposits probably push the price up by a few hundred dollars. That and the kitchens are like the size of a _coffin_ , Pipes.”  
  
She didn’t glance up from her phone but her expression said it all; she was done with this conversation before they got to the restaurant. “Just because you’re attached to your cesspool of an apartment --”  
  
“ _Bachelor pad_ ,” he corrected.  
  
“-- _doesn’t_ mean you have to stay and rot in it while Leo goes off on his own. You’re not codependent on him,” she finished without missing a beat.   
  
“When have I ever been codependent?” he asked, doing his best to look scandalized.  
  
Piper didn’t say anything and continued to look over something on her phone. _Right_ , done with this conversation. It had quintessentially been a part of their daily banter for nearly a month. Or really since Leo announced to everyone within screaming distance that _yes_ , he had a girlfriend! A girlfriend with a _really_ nice apartment in Queens, who also seemed too nice to possibly be real. After a fifth of whiskey and a rather painful admission to Piper that Jason was sure Leo was going to go off with Calypso and forget his roommate ever existed, he could sort of understand why she was done with it in the first place.  
  
Suddenly, he found Piper’s phone dangerously close to his face, the screen blurry from proximity. He leaned his head back to see the familiar layout for an apartment ad.   
  
“ _Look!_ ” she stressed, twitching the phone closer to his face. Jason could feel his eyes begin to cross.  
  
He took the phone from her and glanced over the ad. Pretty standard one bedroom apartment, post-war in design (that was a typical comment on most ads and Jason was yet to figure out why it was so important), a halfway decent kitchen, and laundry access. The photos showed an extremely average apartment, but glorified its juxtaposition to Central Park. Nothing amazing until...  
  
“That rental fee...” he breathed, like he’d just seen the Holy Grail.   
  
Compared to the apartments that tapdanced on the two-and-three thousand dollar line, the apartment was a bargain among bargains. The deposit was standard, which was a pleasant surprise.  
  
“And you can get a cat!” Piper extolled, raising a french fry in celebration.  
  
“Or small animal,” Jason tacked on, reading over the rest of the ad.  
  
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not getting another lizard.”  
  
“The lizard is Leo’s, technically,” Jason said, and then frowned. “There has to be something wrong with this place. It says it’s been on the market for two weeks. Someone would _have_ to have snatched it up by now.”  
  
“Why don’t you go over and have a look, then? It says you can call the agent for a tour.”  
  
Jason was sure the hesitance was scrawled all over his face. Truth was, he _liked_ the apartment he has now. Sure, the rent was steep and Leo was planning on moving to the Magical Girlfriend Palace™ in a month, but he’d lived there as long as he’d been in New York. Even with the questionable garlic smells that came from their freezer and a stove that clicked dangerously in the middle of the night, the apartment has just been _home_ , which Jason inwardly recounted that he’d rarely had in the course of his life.  
  
“ _Jason_ ,” Piper called, snapping him out of his reverie. Her brow was furrowed, but the rest of her expression read outright concern and maybe a little empathy. “You _need_ a new place. You know, somewhere to start over?” She said the last part carefully, like saying it was comparable to walking on eggshells.   
  
He knew what she expected. Maybe a weak smile combined with a grimace, telling her that it was still a sensitive subject. However, he shrugged and gave her the best smile he could summon.   
  
“I’ll go look at it,” he said. “I promise.”  
  
He wasn’t deaf to her sigh of relief, but he stole a french fry anyway for compensation.  
  
\---  
  
East 84th Street was relatively calm in the mid-morning, although Jason could still hear the sounds of traffic closeby. Standing in front of the apartment building in question, a simple tan-colored building with a black awning reading ‘171’ in stark white, there was something surreal about it. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he imagined it was the humid morning air, or the silvery sheet of clouds above him. The air just seemed strangely still, like this particular spot was frozen in time while the rest of New York City bustled with fast-paced commuters. Even when a bicycler went by, followed by a taxi cab, it didn’t permeate the atmosphere. Instead, it just sent the briefest of chills up Jason’s spine, which he quickly shook off.  
  
The lobby was air-conditioned to fight off the oncoming summer, and Jason glanced around to look for the guide. An elderly doorman was sitting behind a desk, reading some sort of crime novel. A young girl sat on a bench between two potted ferns, her legs folded over one another primly while she checked her phone with mild interest. Neither of them looked like they were ready to jump up and give him a tour.  
  
Just then, the door opened behind him and Jason felt a short-lived wave of humidity rolling into the room. A young man hurried in, grin just edging on bashful, his entire being just oozing dishevelment. Without sparing a look around the room, he crossed the space between the door and Jason, his hand already outstretched.  
  
“Jason Grace?” the man asked hopefully.  
  
Jason nodded and returned the shake. “Travis Stoll, right?”  
  
“That’d be me!” Travis replied with a bright smile. “Real estate agent extraordinaire.” The way he said it made him sound more like a showman at a circus rather than an agent.  
  
Regardless, Travis herded him toward the elevator, already bursting right into conversation before the doors opened. “Believe me, this apartment is _great_ ,” he said, allowing Jason to go first when the elevator finally arrived. “Really good views, affordable utilities, cupboard space, and a _pool_! What more could you ask for?”  
  
The elevator went to the fifth floor and Travis practically skipped out of it, like the very prospect of Jason’s interest delighted him. “Trash days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Recyclables on Monday. You live in Manhattan right now, yeah?” He didn’t give Jason time to respond. “Nothing you’re not used to! Presort your recyclables and all that. Landlord’s got it all with the lease information.”  
  
They walked down the hallway and Jason cringed a little at the odor of stale cigarettes. Travis, on the other hand, took in a deep breath like he was inhaling pure mountain air. “ _Ahhh_ ,” he sighed. “ _L’eau du_ New York apartment! Love it.”  
  
“How much are other apartments in the building?” Jason finally asked as Travis reached into his messenger bag to find the keys.  
  
“A little more than this one, I’ll be honest,” Travis replied easily. He glanced up once with a sunny smile like he was in a commercial. “Just some issues with renovation and a bed bug scare from last year.”  
  
Jason found himself doubting the validity of it, but didn’t say anything.   
  
They reached a door with brass-colored numbers reading _513_. To Jason’s minute relief, there was no blood dripping off the wood or anything that would denote that a mass murder happened in the apartment. Travis fiddled with the lock for a moment (did he even have a _key_?) and the door opened. Again, Travis let Jason in first like he was a VIP.  
  
It was an even bigger relief to see that the apartment was _painfully_ normal. The walls were the same off-white as practically every apartment Jason had ever set foot in. There was the soft hum of a functional (!!!) refrigerator, the chirping of birds just outside a window that looked out onto the street, and the muted sound of a game show from somewhere above them. What furniture remained was spartan at best, with a plain blue IKEA-type couch and ottoman and a glass-topped coffee table with a Yankee candle christening it. Other than that, it looked as minimalist as it could possibly get.   
  
“No water leaks,” Travis added, walking around the room in a wide circle. “Windows just got resealed back in March, new wiring a year ago, new hardwood flooring --”  
  
“I thought you said there were renovation problems?”  
  
If Jason hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have seen the briefest of shadows pass over Travis’ face. However, it was gone as quickly as it came and the 500-watt smile was back in place.  
  
“Yeah, everything from the first floor to the eighth got new plumbing and drywall work done. There’s a small block of apartments on the third and fifth that aren’t. Y’know, grumpy tenants, bad contracting. Standard issues.” Travis explained it like it was the most natural thing in the world, but the half a second of hesitation was enough to leave a sour taste in Jason’s mouth.  
  
The thing was, it was a _nice_ apartment. One quick jaunt around the place was enough to prove that. Like Travis said, there were no visible leaks and no drafts coming in. Everything had that residual surreal calm like Jason felt outside. The place was _spotless_ and had an open-air atmosphere due to wide-set windows facing the street. Anyone with half a brain and a paycheck like Jason’s would have jumped at a chance like this.  
  
But there was something _else_. Something so microscopically imperceptible that Jason thought it might have just been doubt gnawing at the back of his mind. The apartment felt off-kilter somehow, like it had been placed on an incline that could only be felt if you had been on a flat surface long enough.   
  
Another voice popped into his mind, sounding suspiciously similar to Piper. _It’s just because you’re attached to the cesspool_. Not too off base, he guessed. Compared to Leo’s apartment, it was like an empty room placed beside a landfill. There were no posters covering the walls like wallpaper, no Festus the Bearded Dragon relaxing on his sunning rock, no TV and game system blasting out Call of Duty at an impossible volume level. It was quiet and clean, and Jason convinced himself that it was the only thing making him feel weird.  
  
“There’s no hidden fees, right?”  
  
“Right,” Travis affirmed. “It’s all like it said on the ad.”  
  
His better judgement screamed for him to reconsider. _There’s something wrong with this place,_ a voice said, and it wasn’t Piper this time. It was a different voice that Jason had never heard before. Another chill raced up his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, but he was already shaking hands with Travis.  
  
Jason couldn’t ignore that Travis looked like he’d being relieved of an enormous burden


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh thank you guys so much! ;w; I was really thrilled (and also a blushing mess) over the reaction to this fic. You're all so awesome and made me feel so welcome in this fandom. Thank you thank you THANK YOU.
> 
> Also, I changed the fic to being in past tense. The first chapter was switched over to it with an explanation at the top (spoilers: I wrote half of this chapter in past tense before I realized what had happened but it was easier that present tense). Hopefully that doesn't mess anyone up.
> 
> This chapter is mostly exhibition. Lots of background story before the fun starts. Yayyy we like fun. :D

When Jason had first moved to New York City, he had only a slight idea of what the city was like. Most of what he knew was gathered from movies ranging from _13 Going on 30_ to _Gangs of New York_. It painted an eclectic picture, but generally manifested as a mental image of towering skyscrapers made of somber stone and shimmering glass, and damp rat-infested alleyways crawling with criminals. Even when he was still in California and talking to Leo over Skype about the apartment, his reaction to Leo explaining that his apartment was near Bowery was a mortified-yet-intrigued, “ _You mean like the Bowery Boys?_ ” It took a few minutes of explaining that the Five Points was more of a 1920s thing for Jason to get the inkling that his version of New York was pretty unrealistic, and ironically Hollywood-like.  
  
Naturally, the area around Leo’s apartment was possibly the farthest thing from what Jason imagined. They lived near what Jason could only describe as a crossroads of neighborhoods. They were definitely in the Lower East Side, but crossing Bowery led them into Nolita, whereas to the east was SoHo. Alphabet City was somewhere to the north, and it didn’t take more than a ten minute walk south to get to Chinatown.  
  
The apartment faced the short Rivington Street, which was full of converted tenements styled up into what their real estate agent called “ _something livable_ ”. The fortunate thing was that in contrast to the gentrified college student-filled apartments surrounding them, their tiny section of Rivington still had a distinctly local feel. The German biergarten they lived above was relatively quiet, even on Friday and Saturday nights. Across the street were a few stores ranging from a secondhand restaurant equipment supplier to an Afghani designer. The only thing that threatened the so-called sanctity of the street was a recently bought-out apartment complex on the corner, the rooms being renovated and the rent hiking up at an alarming rate. Leo and Jason had looked up the rent out of curiosity and immediately balked when the numbers got feverishly high.  
  
Little things like that made Jason appreciate their apartment for everything it was worth. The walls were all exposed brick, save for the bathroom (although Leo made sure to make it as unique as the rest of the place). At some point, someone had installed modernesque black French doors leading into the master bedroom, but Leo and Jason had taken the liberty to cover the burnished metal with bumper stickers (“ _That was zen, this is Tao!_ ” proclaimed one) and proudly topped it off with a CBGB sticker like a keystone. The dining set didn’t match, and the table was one that better belonged on a patio. The most expensive thing they owned other than a refurbished dishwasher was a massive flat screen TV which was used more for gaming than anything else.  
  
For all the strange assortments of posters, the bearded dragon, and the car parts that Leo hung up on the walls like trophies, it was the most comfortable place Jason had ever lived in.  
  
Maybe that was why he was so reluctant to move. When he lived in California, it had always felt like he was out of place. People were friendly enough, but it was like he was disconnected, slowly moving from place to place and looking for nothing in particular. Moving to New York provided him an answer to a question he hadn’t even asked. There was a community, friends that were as genuine and long-lasting as a statue, and _home_. The apartment in the Upper East Side would probably be home as well, but it would never be the Rivington apartment.  
  
Piper had told him that he needed to start over. At first, he excused it. He _had_ started over when he moved. He got a new job and made a new group of friends with Piper included. But she was right, he grudgingly admitted. He was getting codependent, and one way he could really start over was to live on his own for once.  
  
\---  
  
The wide-tip marker had definitely seen better days. It didn’t help that Leo’s idea of labeling boxes was to not only say what was _inside_ the box, but to make some sort of short, humorous description of it. Of course, a whole paragraph declaring the virtues of his glassware might have been too much, since it had landed Jason in the position of having to rewrite _Bedsheets_ twice on his own box so that the word was visible.  
  
Leo had been in and out the entire day, shuffling boxes to and from Queens, insisting that his pick-up would be more efficient and cost-effective than hiring a moving truck. Traffic begged to differ, and Jason was certain that pushing all the boxes onto the subway would have been ten times more efficient and practical than fighting the deluge of cars and taxis.  
  
However, it gave Jason two and three hours at a time to work in relative silence, rather than attempting to organize while Leo belted out an off key version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Jason was also more than relieved to switch out Leo’s Ramones CD with a quieter Sufjan Stevens one for the time being.  
  
After successfully taping and marking the box of sheets, Jason stood up and hefted it to place it in the growing stack. He only had a few boxes left, but he was aware that since he’d started the process, he was subconsciously taking his time so that he wouldn’t have to leave right away. Leo called him out once for being ridiculously slow in sorting his books, forming a pile of things to take to the East 84th apartment and another to send to the Salvation Army in Chinatown. The issue was that he read the first two pages of each book to determine if it was something he would read again or not.  
  
It was harder to decide what his intentions really were, or if they were a combination. He didn’t know if he wanted to stay in the Rivington apartment longer, or if the strange atmosphere at the East 84th one was keeping him away.  
  
That was another thing that his mind kept going back to. Jason had gone over the lease with the landlord shortly after the tour with Travis. It seemed standard, with the landlord outlining the general rules of the apartment complex and giving him a list of what could be recycled, and telling him where his parking place would be. However, like Travis, there was definitely something the landlord wasn’t telling him. Once in awhile, when Jason was glancing over paperwork, he could catch a glimpse of the landlord staring at him, his expression unreadable but certainly nothing positive.  
  
“Just stop,” he finally snapped at himself aloud, reaching over and grabbing another empty cardboard box. “It’s a stupid Manhattan apartment and it’s going to be _fine_.”  
  
Fine enough that he had to talk to himself about it, a rebellious part of him reminded.  
  
Fortunately, it was silenced as soon as his phone went off, cheerfully repeating the shifting sound effect from Transformers; Leo was calling.  
  
“Yeah?” Jason said by way of answering, cradling his phone between his shoulder and chin while he began folding a pillowcase.  
  
“Sooo, I was thinking,” Leo replied. Jason could hear Calypso snort in the background. Magical Girlfriend, sure, but Jason did like her. “Yeah, yeah, smoke coming out of my ears. I get it. _Anyway_ , you don’t have that much stuff to send over to your new place, right?”  
  
“Yeah, like seven boxes total. Why?”  
  
Jason knew the answer before Leo even spoke again. “What if I drive them over to the new place? It’s just a straight shot down 3rd, right?”  
  
“Leo, that takes a half an hour. You’ve already spent like two days moving your stuff to Queens.”  
  
“Google Maps says it takes ten minutes.”  
  
Jason rolled his eyes. “Triple that.”  
  
“Whatevs, man. I can do it. Besides, that’s not the only thing I was gonna ask you,” Leo replied, sounding a little too sure of himself. “Piper and I were talking the other day and she came up with some chick flick idea of having some kinda housewarming party for you. I dunno, potpourri and croissants or something. At least before she hightails it back to Malibu to go see her dad.”  
  
Right, Jason kept forgetting that clause. As long as he’d been friends with Piper, she seemed like a constant fixture in his life. Not long after Leo talked about moving to Queens, Piper mentioned moving back to Malibu to stay with her dad, who evidently had been missing her quite a bit, even with his busy schedule. Recent years really had improved what was formerly a rough relationship, so Piper felt like it would help. Yes, she loved New York like she was born there, but she also loved her dad. There wasn’t a whole lot of deliberation.  
  
They hadn’t talked about it much, but it was like someone took an ice cream scoop to Jason’s chest and left two identical dents. One for moving away from Rivington, and another for Piper, his constant, leaving for California. Even after she promised she would come back and she wouldn’t sell her apartment (not like she financially _needed_ to), it still stung.  
  
“I guess that sounds fine,” Jason finally replied, wincing a little when he sounded let down.  
  
“What’s with the Eeyore voice? I can get the stuff for walking tacos or something. I know you like those.”  
  
That eked out a smile at least. Count on Leo to make him feel better about something he had been moping over for weeks. “That’d be cool. I just...” He sighed, setting the pillowcase down in the box before pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, man.”  
  
“Woah, amigo! Jason Grace is _not_ the type to get all mopey. What’s wrong?”  
  
Jason had to deliberate an answer. “Too much happening too fast, I think?” he settled.  
  
“ _Ahhh_ yeah, I can kinda feel that. I mean, you were like, couchsurfing back in California, right?” Leo asked, trying his best to sound upbeat.  
  
“I guess you could say that,” Jason murmured. He cleared his throat and leaned back on the couch, staring up at the pockmarked ceiling. “It just feels weird moving after all of this.”  
  
“Yeah. Hey, listen. If you want, when I get back, we can head down to that one cocktail place you like or--”  
  
The sound of a clattering dish outside gave Jason a better idea. “Loreley’s?” he suggested.  
  
He could hear the grin in Leo’s voice. “Why the hell not. Want to ask Piper for old time’s sake?”  
  
There was a straining sort of ache in Jason’s chest at her name, but he smiled despite himself. “Sounds good.”  
  
“Right on! See you in like twenty minutes!”  
  
“More like an hour, Leo.”  
  
Leo snorted and hung up, leaving Jason with a darkened phone screen, a stack of cardboard boxes destined for an empty apartment, and Sufjan Stevens singing softly in the background.  
  
‘ _I was in love with the place_

_In my mind, in my mind_

_I made a lot of mistakes_

_In my mind, in my mind.’_

  
\---  
  
In reality, Jason wasn’t all that fond of beer. He drank socially, if anything. Whereas Leo often packed their fridge with wine coolers and a rainbow myriad of IPAs, Jason honestly preferred soda or this kind of apple juice that Piper always got from the health food store. However, when it came to Loreley’s, he ordered one anyway, mostly to blend in with everyone else. It kind of seemed sacrilegious to go to a biergarten and not order the drink in question.  
  
However, it wasn’t the drinks or the food that made him so fond of the place. It had the same draw as the apartment directly over it. There was a distinct familiarity, a warmth that was hard to find in other new restaurants that intended to have a chic feel. It felt older, kind of like how Jason imagined going to Cheers would be. Even sitting in the actual garden itself had a charm to it, like there was this tiny slice of paradise in Lower East Side that could be enjoyed with a lager and the twinkling of garden lights.  
  
Most of all, it was where Jason, Piper, and Leo had cemented their friendship. After Jason had moved in with Leo and introduced Piper, his girlfriend at the time and New York liaison, they had spent more than two hours just sitting in the garden and talking about their lives. That was where Jason had learned that Leo had spent a depressingly large amount of his childhood in and out of foster care after his mother died in an accident and his aunt rejected him. They both learned that Piper used to have a criminal record in California when she was younger and would steal things to get her father’s attention. Only a savvy assistant, a load of money, and some corrupt people cleared her name. Leo and Piper in turn learned that part of the reason Jason had left California was because he had just met his sister that he never knew he had, only to have her promptly whisked out of his life again just after he had absorbed the fact that he actually did have biological family.  
  
It brought a sort of nostalgic sadness when Jason walked out into the garden to be seated. Nothing had changed about the place in the three years he had been going there. Even their waitress was the same. Her name was Clarisse and she worked two jobs to support herself and her boyfriend who had been in and out of the hospital for a year or so. When she wasn’t working at the bar, she worked as an MMA trainer, which impressed the trio considerably. Despite what was sometimes an intimidating exterior, Jason had quickly learned that Clarisse was one of the most generous and caring people he had ever met.  
  
She seated them with a quick grin before she went back inside to get their drinks. Part of it might have been that the trio tipped _really_ well.  
  
As they sat waiting, Jason could feel the slightest inkling of tension. Piper was busying herself with her phone and Leo was tying their straw papers together into a complex knot.  
  
“ _So,_ ” Jason started, staring down at the droplets clinging to his glass of water.  
  
Only Piper looked up. Leo was attempting to weave the papers around a toothpick.  
  
“Um, so housewarming party?” Jason tried.  
  
It didn’t exactly shatter the tension, but it did ease it up. Piper slid into an easy smile and tucked her phone into her pocket. “Yep! Got it all planned out. You should have all your stuff in the apartment by next week, right?”  
  
He shrugged. “Yeah, if you count an air mattress among that. At least it came with a couch.”  
  
That didn’t deter her. “Good. I invited just a few people. Most of them are bringing you some kind of housewarming gift, since that’s tradition and everything. As for _me,_ ” she said, placing her hand on her chest in a demure gesture. “I think I got you the best present ever.”  
  
This time, Leo looked up, an elfish grin on his face. “Yeah she did.”  
  
“Though this present comes with a few other auxiliary presents. Nothing drastic.”  
  
Jason made a show of leaning away from her, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said jokingly, the corner of his mouth quirking up.  
  
“Oh, it sounds like _something_ alright,” Leo replied, only to be elbowed in the side by Piper.  
  
“Anyway,” she went on. “It’ll be me, you, Leo, Percy, Annabeth, and a few friends of theirs who live in the area. Good way to make friends.”  
  
Jason had almost forgotten how close he would be living to Percy and Annabeth. They were like the wonder couple in their group of friends, one never being seen very far from the other, except when they went to work. Percy worked at the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn as an interpreter, but really just signed on for the job so he could scuba dive eventually. Annabeth, on the other hand, worked at an architectural firm in one of the many ridiculously-sized skyscrapers in Manhattan. The trio had gotten to be friends with them after meeting them in a cocktail bar, where Percy took on a dare from Leo to take off his shoes and socks and stand in the bar’s decorative fountain. Thirty dollars and a rather harsh warning from the bar owner later, their friendship was signed and sealed, and it was a beautiful thing. It also helped that Jason and Percy got along quickly, despite differing temperaments.  
  
Having them at any sort of party was bound to make it more exciting than just standing around and musing that it was a nice apartment and the walking tacos were pretty good. With Percy around, the supplies for the walking tacos would probably disappear within a ten minute period. Pair that with a hilarious lecture from Annabeth about eating all the snacks at a party that wasn’t theirs and Piper’s housewarming effort would be _golden_. At the very least, it might have made the apartment not feel so weird.  
  
Clarisse came back with their drinks and took their orders, although her way of asking what they wanted was more like, “The same things you guys get _every time?_ ” They all nodded and she sighed and rolled her eyes with a barely concealed smile before walking back in.  
  
The table fell quiet again, except the silence was more comfortable. There was the ambience of low conversations around the garden, the wind hissing through the chestnut trees, and the crunch of gravel as people walked across the patio.  
  
“It’s gonna be weird, huh?” Leo suddenly piped up, setting his woven toothpick project aside. “First time in three years where we’re all spread out.”  
  
Jason watched as Piper laid back in her seat, her expression waxing and waning through various forms of sadness and contentment. “It won’t last forever. You guys are little _too_ magnetic. I’d be surprised if I lasted a year in Malibu.”  
  
Leo gave her a crooked grin. “You think you’re gonna be able to tear yourself away from going tanning with Cameron Diaz?”  
  
“I thought she lived in New York,” Jason added.  
  
Piper just laughed, which was a welcome change. “I’d rather not hang out with my dad’s friends, honestly.”  
  
Leo took the opportunity to do a somewhat pathetic impression of Piper. “ _Ooooh, I’m Piper McLean and I don’t wanna go to my dad’s lunch party! Brad and Angelina are going to be there!_ ”  
  
Piper swatted at Leo’s shoulder, but was smiling regardless.  
  
They slid into pleasantly pointless conversation after that, which Jason enjoyed. It drew him away from thinking negatively and instead lulled him into one moment in time where everything was fine.  
  
After some time, Clarisse came with their food balanced on her arm in a way that Jason was sure wasn’t human.  
  
“The summer salad for Piper,” she started, dislodging the plate in question. Now was Jason and Leo’s favorite part; Clarisse attempting German. “Bratwurst mit Sauerkraut und Kartoffelpuree,” she attempted, setting the plate down in front of Leo who snorted.  
  
“Thanks,” he managed.  
  
“Hey, I’ve been working on my phlegm,” she shot back. “Anyway, sliders for the nice person who doesn’t order one of the longest things on the menu just to spite me.” She set the sliders down in front of Jason who grinned up at her with his best superstar smile.  
  
“Brown noser,” Leo muttered, swirling his mashed potatoes with his fork.  
  
Clarisse gave Jason a (too strong) pat on the back. “He gets better service because of it. Everyone but Leo, enjoy.”  
  
She left just as Leo accidentally aspirated some potatoes. He coughed and thumped his chest before glaring in her direction.  
  
One thing Jason could say with complete confidence was that Loreley had the _best_ sliders in New York. Something about the pretzel buns probably, but it was hard to resist crawling downstairs around dinnertime and wasting his money on them. If he didn’t have better self control, his entire paycheck would have been drained in the name of good sliders.  
  
Just as he was cresting into slider heaven, Piper sighed and prodded at a chunk of gouda in her salad. “I’m going to miss this,” she said.  
  
“F’thalad?” Leo asked around his bratwurst.  
  
“No, not the _salad_. Well, okay yeah, I’m going to miss the salad too. But I mean all of _this_ ,” she gestured around the patio with her fork. “Malibu’s cool and all, but it’s not _here_. You know what I mean?”  
  
Jason nodded while Leo bit his bratwurst in half and elegantly let the other half drop onto the plate.  
  
Piper wrinkled her nose at the sight and leaned away. “Not going to miss that.”  
  
Leo just shrugged and rolled the rest of the sausage into the potatoes, giving it a generous coating.  
  
“Anyway, aside from the classy act we just saw,” she continued. “Just... after the party, that’s kind of it for me here. Yeah, I’ll be back, but that’s not going to stop me from pining.”  
  
“I’ll still text you?” Jason offered, really for a lack of anything better to say.  
  
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You better. I expect full length phone calls, mister.”  
  
He put his hands up in surrender for a moment, but immediately went back to his slider.  
  
“Good,” she said with finality. Then she started picking at her salad again, rolling a tomato around. “Just don’t do anything super fun or awesome without me. Like, swear off Loreley’s until I get back or something.”  
  
Leo’s eyes widened. “Do you know what you’re asking of us?”  
  
“Consider it like a year-long Lent.”  
  
Appropriately, Leo crossed himself.  
  
“And _you_ specifically,” she pointed to Jason. “I want to see your decoration habits for the new place. The second it starts looking like your place upstairs, I’m catching the first plane back to LaGuardia and kicking you in the shin or something equally threatening.”  
  
“Noted,” Jason replied with a grin.  
  
She smiled back at him. “Awesome. Less stress for me.”  
  
They went back to eating, but Piper had left a trail of thoughts for Jason to pick through. Life without Piper, with less of Leo, with really everything different save for Jason staying Jason, which could be a problem. He idly wondered if this was what it was like being on death row, knowing that he was waiting for the inevitable and biding his time best he could until his timer flashed zeroes.  
  
It shouldn’t have been half as melodramatic, and Leo was right in that Jason wasn’t the type to mope. Really, he thought he handled change remarkably well for someone who had been in his various situations. _This_ , however, had a different feel to it than even meeting his sister for the first time did. For once in his life, he felt like he had found just the right niche, the perfect combination of place and people. To have all of that dissipate before his eyes was alarming, and it made the concept of starting over seem more daunting.  
  
He didn’t want to lose it now, just when he had found the right pace.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Strange Things happen and Piper gives Jason his present earlier than expected, understandably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhh gosh, I didn't mean for this to take over ten days to write. D: Well hey, at least it got done. Sloooow build, amirite?
> 
> So this chapter was kind of fun to make, but the next one is already even more fun. I'm already pretty excited for it. Hopefully it takes less than ten days and I won't be caught in some weird fanfiction limbo like I was this time. Anyway, thanks for the kudos and the comments once again. You're all amazing and I hope I'm making this worth reading! ;w;

It was raining hard on the first day that Jason actually began moving into his apartment. Naturally, Jason didn’t have an umbrella or a raincoat, and so ended up in a soaking wet hoodie by the time he got from Leo’s truck to the lobby. The cold leached through two layers of fabric, making him shiver especially hard when a wave of air conditioning hit him. Fortunately, the box he held was no worse for the wear, save for a mural of darkened spots from raindrops.   
  
While he waited for Leo to park in the garage, he sniffed and looked around the lobby. Different doorman this time, but also reading some sort of James Patterson paperback. He glanced up once at Jason before nodding and going back to his book. Other than him, the place was a bare austere modern marble hall. It was stark white with gray granite interspersed, and it kind of hurt Jason’s eyes. Compared to the dark burnished brick of Rivington, it was like looking directly into a flashlight.  
  
Leo finally came in nearly ten minutes later, when Jason had finally gotten bored enough to stare at some post-modern facsimile painting of a young girl eating some kind of bright red fruit.   
  
“That took awhile,” Jason said dryly as Leo practically tripped in, balancing three boxes like he was in a circus act.  
  
“That thing has like nine levels and I couldn’t remember your apartment number,” Leo shot back.  
  
They bickered for a short moment as they squeezed into the elevator, Jason pausing only to begin to dread the fact that they were going to have to move furniture upstairs. Maybe he really would have to resign himself to sleeping on an air mattress forever.   
  
“I’m calling a moving company tomorrow,” he muttered, shuddering at the thought of hauling a full-sized bed and box springs up five flights of stairs.   
  
“Aw, c’mon! I’m not that bad!”  
  
Jason peered over at him and frowned. “You’re up to bringing my entire bed set up the stairs? Because lest you forget that Calypso lives on the first floor.”  
  
It was hard to miss the momentary look of horror that crossed Leo’s face. “I... I’d figure something out,” he tentatively replied.  
  
“Right. Calling someone.”  
  
Predictably, Leo didn’t argue.   
  
Once they actually got to the apartment and Jason opened the door, Leo let out an appreciative whistle as he walked inside. “ _Damn_. You got all this for what?”  
  
“Less than what we’re paying now,” Jason said, setting down his box on the floor and unzipping his hoodie. “The guy tried to tell me it was because this apartment wasn’t renovated with all the other ones.”  
  
“Bullshit.”  
  
Jason shrugged. “Guess I get to find out over the next few months.”  
  
“Bet it’s termites or something,” Leo said, setting down his boxes as methodically as he could, then pulling a boxcutter out of his jacket pocket. “Like, back when I was working for that one guy on 6th, we were installing a dryer in a place up in Alphabet City, and it was one of those new lofts or whatever? Some college kid, I think. Anyway, so we pull the old one out and there’s a hole the size of my _head_ behind it! Termites ate right through the drywall and into the wood. Long story short, don’t believe anything the real estate agents tell ya.” He cut through the tape of the box of cutlery with a satisfying _zip_ sound.  
  
Jason busied himself with opening the box of glassware. He was fortunate enough that Leo had a pretty good sense of balance when he needed to. Balancing everything Jason needed for his kitchen was a sizable risk.   
  
“So, anyway, like I was at work, right?” Leo started. Jason braced himself for one of Leo’s long-winded (and oft exaggerated) work stories. “Nyssa comes up to me and tells me that we have this guy that dropped off a dishwasher that’s all like industrial grade and he tells her that it’s super great and it’s in good condition, but we might wanna open it outside to clean it because it had like three years of use in a French restaurant so he doesn’t know. Nyssa takes it out there and opens it and it’s full of--”  
  
Before Leo could finish, Jason saw something dark move in his periphery, like someone was walking beside him. He flinched and turned his head, seeing only an empty hallway.  
  
Leo frowned at him, one hand full of forks and the mystery of what was in the French restaurant’s dishwasher left unanswered. “Jason? What’s up?”  
  
Jason stared down the hallway, waiting for what ever it was to appear again. When it was obvious that it must have been a figment of his imagination, he sighed and resumed opening the box. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “Thought I saw something.”  
  
With a snort, Leo set the forks beside him. “New apartment jitters. You’re just not used to a place being this clean.”  
  
The problem was, the dark shape was as clear as day, not so much a blind spot or phosphenes as it was as tangible as Leo sitting beside him. With it came that surreal muted feeling that Jason felt on the first day, causing a wave of nauseous cold to spread through his stomach. He suddenly dreaded the prospect of sleeping there by himself.  
  
Immediately, he shook it off. It was nothing. He had bought the place and his nerves were just getting the best of him. Some rebellious part of his mind was defying him for leaving his comfort zone.   
  
“Anyway,” he finally managed, pulling some of his glasses out of their nests of crumpled newspaper. “The dishwasher was full of...?”  
  
\---  
  
In retrospect, he probably should have guessed that when one weird thing happened, a thousand more were going to follow. That was the theme of his life, he supposed. Of course, the varying _degrees_ of weird depended on the situation, and in reality, a new apartment was a great place to start. At first, Jason thought Leo was right and it was just the wide open space, completely devoid of clutter. It really could have made anyone hallucinatory, especially after living with Leo for three years.

  
However, he couldn’t exactly hallucinate his newly-installed television flipping to a channel of pure static on a regular basis.  
  
Backstory was easy. Leo had scored him a refurbished TV, which he had checked out and tested and made absolute one hundred percent sure that it functioned up to par. It was nice as it was, being one of those small-scale flat screens that could fit perfectly into an entertainment center. Naturally, and with good common sense, he hired a moving company to get it into his apartment, lest Leo lose it somewhere in Manhattan like he sometimes had a tendency to do with other electronics. (Jason was sure his last iPod was in a bird’s nest somewhere in Central Park.)  
  
They installed it and the guy from the satellite company was set to come over within the week to hook it up as well as his internet. Until then, Jason hooked up a DVD player to entertain himself while he unpacked the rest of his things.   
  
Really, it had no reason to flip to a stupidly loud channel of snowy static right in the middle of _Night at the Museum_.   
  
He changed it, only to have it flip back within five minutes. Only after a short but violent round of percussive maintenance did it seem to understand that it had a job to do.  
  
Then it did it again when Piper was over and they were wading through her box set of Supernatural. Just as Dean Winchester was attempting to slice a ghost in half with an iron pipe, the TV flipped to the static channel, hissing at Jason like it didn’t approve of his choices.  
  
“What the hell?” Piper grumbled, reaching for the remote. “What’s the matter with your TV?”  
  
“No idea,” he grudgingly replied. He had a moment where he seriously considered calling Leo just to exchange some strong words with him.  
  
She got it back to the first channel, but five minutes later like the damn thing was on a timer, it went right back.  
  
“ _Rrrgh_ stop!” she shouted, waving the remote threateningly.  
  
The TV ignored her command and just kept hissing.   
  
Finally, a day later, Jason called Leo to look at it. Leo spent about ten minutes behind the entertainment center, tugging at wires and adjusting screws.   
  
“I don’t get it...” Leo said a few times. Jason tried to pretend it didn’t sound foreboding.  
  
They tested the TV once after Leo messed with it, attempting to get through the first few minutes of _The Hobbit_. Jason waited, clenching his fists without meaning to, and as soon as it went to static, both he and Leo let out an irritated shout like the Yankees had lost.  
  
“How in the hell?” was all Leo managed to get out.  
  
Strange Thing Number Two occurred almost simultaneously as Leo got up to look it over again. Travis had told him that the windows of the apartment had been resealed recently, and the couch wasn’t under a vent of any kind, so there was no reason to feel a draft brush by him. He shivered and glanced over at the window to make sure it wasn’t left open for what ever reason, and as soon as he turned his head, he _heard_ something. It sounded like laughter, muted as if it was behind a closed door.   
  
Naturally, Leo didn’t hear it. Even if he did, his formidable assembly line of various curse words was loud enough to drown it out.   
  
“This place isn’t old enough to be haunted, is it?” Jason asked, crossing his arms over his chest and shivering despite himself.   
  
Leo snorted before he snapped out some harsh sounding and probably vulgar Spanish word. Evidently things weren’t going well.   
  
After that, Jason kept the TV off until the day of the housewarming party. For the rest of his time unpacking, he sat in an uncomfortable silence, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching him.  
  
\---  
  
The day that the movers were set to bring up his bed set (also the day that the air mattress would be moved to the closet until further notice and with great celebration), Piper called him. Jason was in the middle of wrestling with a socket wrench and the scattered pieces of an IKEA chair when he managed to pull his phone out of his pocket, all while holding one chair leg in place with his feet. Honestly, it was pretty impressive.  
  
“Mmyeah?” he grunted.  
  
“I kind of just figured out that I might have to bring you your present early. It might not go over well at the party if I don’t,” she said, sounding like she was holding back a round of the giggles.  
  
He raised an eyebrow. “Intriguing.”  
  
“Are you at the apartment right now?”  
  
“Yeah, if you want to help me put together furniture,” he replied.  
  
This time, she _did_ giggle, and it reminded Jason of how infectious her laughter was. “I’ll try my best, as long as you do too.”   
  
He didn’t get a chance to remark on how cryptic that sounded.  
  
In the half hour it took for Piper to get to the apartment, Jason somehow managed to piece the chair together, even going as far as to tentatively test it out. He squeezed his eyes shut and sat on it, bracing himself for the National Lampoon-level collapse. The disembodied laughter would probably follow, he bet.  
  
Fortunately, it held, and Jason sent up a praise to the gods of Swedish interior design.  
  
When she finally knocked on the door, Jason was frowning at the directions for the table. So far he had been using a card table that Leo had gotten from someone at work (complete with cigarette burns and questionable stains), so it would be an enormous relief to have something clean and substantial. That and he didn’t want to permanently leave Piper with the impression that he was bent on keeping up the appearances of a bachelor pad.   
  
She knocked twice before he opened the door, being greeted with her sunny smile which made him smile in return, and a cat carrier in her left hand, which kind of dampened his smile a bit.   
  
“Is that...?”  
  
Piper nodded enthusiastically, trotting into the apartment like she lived there. As he closed the door behind her, he saw that over her right shoulder was an alarmingly hefty tote bag. _Auxiliary presents_ , his memory supplied.  
  
“I got him at the ASPCA on East 92nd!” she said cheerfully, setting the bag down on the newly constructed chair. “And it keeps you from being tempted to get a lizard, so that’s always a good thing.”  
  
Jason’s mind had to buffer for a second, complete with a spinning loading icon, before it clicked.   
  
“You got me a _cat_?”  
  
She barked out a laugh as she kneeled down next to the carrier. “I told you that you could get a cat when you got this apartment. You didn’t even guess?”  
  
He shook his head and kneeled beside her. “I didn’t think you were going to take it seriously,” he replied.  
  
Piper opened the latch and released the single fluffiest cat Jason had ever seen. It better resembled a gray cloud with sentience than a cat. The thing was _massive_ , all ash gray fur with two glaring yellow eyes somewhere near the top of the mass.   
  
“This is Stormy,” Piper introduced. “Stormy, this is Jason. Please don’t destroy his new apartment.”  
  
Jason cringed at the name, but watched as the thundercloud slinked around the living room, pausing only once to do some sort of yoga move in order to clean his leg. Then it was back to investigation.   
  
While Jason still puzzled over the fact that there was a gigantic cat sweeping through his apartment, Piper got up and got the tote bag. She glanced over its contents before setting it beside him. “I got him some cat food before I got here. There’s also food and water dishes with a litter box, but the litter itself is in my car since it’s heavy, so I’ll get that here before I leave. And there’s a blanket for him to sleep on, but the girl at the ASPCA said he likes sleeping on furniture, so there’s _that_ ,” she explained. She glanced up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “You might also want to get him a collar? Since it’s New York and all, even though I don’t think he can sneak down the stairs or anything.”  
  
For lack of anything better to say, Jason gave her a dumbfounded look instead. “Piper, you got me a _cat_.”  
  
She rolled her eyes before spreading her arms out like she was going in for a hug. “Housewarming present! Besides, I didn’t want you to get lonely! Pretty awesome of me, right?”  
  
“Cat,” was all he said, pointing to where Stormy was currently backing up against a wall, tail raised and twitching.  
  
Piper’s eyes went wide and her mouth pulled down into a mortified frown before she decided to chase after him. “No! You’re neutered! You can’t do that!”  
  
Fortunately, Jason had the forethought of packing a roll of paper towels. With a string of apologies from Piper and Stormy circling the couch like it astounded him, they managed to get the spot cleaned up.   
  
“They told me he was neutered and he wouldn’t spray or anything,” Piper mumbled, tossing the second paper towel into the trash.   
  
“Maybe we should rename him?” Jason suggested.  
  
She raised an eyebrow.  
  
“Get it? Like his name is _Stormy_ and he peed, like _rain_. Ha-ha?”  
  
The speed and force with which she punched his arm was probably record-setting.   
  
They ended up mulling over possible names while the currently nameless cat sat on the arm of the couch like the proudest, most voluminous gargoyle.   
  
“Ash?” Jason tried.  
  
Piper shook her head. “Makes me think of Pokemon. How about... Mister Bigglesworth?” When Jason gave her the flattest look he could muster, she snorted and leaned back against the (not peed on) wall. “Yeah, I’m running low on creative juices here. What about Thunder?”  
  
“Ehhh, almost. Except I knew someone who had a Golden Retriever named Thunder, so that wouldn’t work.”  
  
Both of them sighed and watched the cat as he began cleaning himself.  
  
The proverbial lightbulb popped up over Jason’s head. “Tempest?”  
  
“ _Oooh_ , I like that!” Piper replied, giving him a thumbs up. “Kind of classy, but still descriptive. Good one.”  
  
They high-fived and Tempest yawned.   
  
After that, Jason corralled Tempest toward his bedroom before he and Piper went down to the parking garage to get the litter. Piper was right. It was _heavy_. Jason wasn’t entirely sure what was in cat litter in the first place, or what had encouraged the designers of the packaging to make the handle a thin strip of plastic that cut into his hand. Eventually, he hoisted it up and balanced it on his right shoulder while Piper darted ahead of him to open doors.   
  
By the time they got back into the apartment, Tempest was yowling and scratching at the bedroom door. Piper opened it and Tempest happily returned to his slinking observation gauntlet.   
  
“I’m surprised he’s not freaking out,” Piper noted while Jason tried to figure out how to open the box of litter. “Most cats hide for the first day or two. He seems fine.”  
  
“Well, it’s only been like twenty minutes,” Jason replied, finding something that _might_ have been a dotted line. He picked at it with his thumbnail, although he was doing a better job of fraying the cardboard than opening it.   
  
“Maybe it’s just the apartment,” she continued like she didn’t hear him. “I guess it’s kind of got a homey feel to it. And speaking of which, did Leo ever figure that TV thing out?”  
  
Jason grimaced and shrugged. “Sort of,” he said. “Mostly it was him tweaking things and swearing, so I don’t know if you could call that progress.”  
  
“Weird,” Piper said. She took the spot on the ground next to him and pulled the auxiliary gift bag over. She pulled out two metal bowls and set them on the ground next to the still empty litter box, filling one bowl up with dry cat food. “Are we still going to be able to watch anything at the party?”  
  
“Here’s hoping the ghost in my apartment likes what ever movie I pick,” Jason joked, ignoring that part of his mind suggesting that he wasn’t wrong.  
  
“Tell it that it can deal for one night and start messing with the TV again the morning _after_.”  
  
As Jason finally got the box open, the now familiar chill raced down his spine and he shuddered against it. Piper didn’t notice, instead getting up to fill up the other bowl with water.  
  
Honestly, he didn’t _want_ to believe it. He was still sure that it was either a matter of hallucinating or just an overactive imagination. Maybe he just wanted something to be wrong with the apartment so he could have another excuse to say the apartment on Rivington was better. Of course if he had to pick, _ghosts_ wouldn’t have been his first choice.   
  
Piper stayed for a few hours after they had set everything up for Tempest. Eventually, the cat in question found that he liked the farthest right cushion on the couch and settled in for a nap on it.  
  
While the cat snoozed, Jason and Piper talked for awhile, mostly reminiscing on their time in New York, and the times before that. It reminded Jason as to why he enjoyed Piper’s company so much. She made him feel at ease, giving him that illusion for just a moment that everything in the world was completely fine. Even her voice sometimes lulled him to complete calmness.   
  
She talked about her dad’s house in Malibu, as Jason had never been there. The thing was, Piper wasn’t all into the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. There wasn’t a starstruck bone in her body, although whether that was just something she naturally came by or a byproduct of her father’s occupation wasn’t quite clear. Still, despite liking the simple things in life, she could appreciate the architecture and decoration of the house. She admitted that she would still probably look for a temporary apartment while she was there, since she couldn’t imagine living in a mansion that size for very long.  
  
“Too spacious,” she explained, cringing at the idea. “It’s almost creepy.”  
  
That was one of those things he really liked about Piper. She was honest without being horribly blunt, able to voice her opinions without fear of being stymied.  
  
It was a simultaneous surprise and relief when she put both hands on his shoulders before she left, staring into his eyes with the most serious expression he had ever seen her give. She watched him for a moment, and he spent the time trying to give a name to her eye color. It always seemed different.  
  
“You’re going to do fine,” she said, her voice strong but still soothing to hear. “I know this isn’t what you wanted, but I have a feeling that things are going to work out for you.”  
  
It wasn’t unlike her to say something like that. The past few years had revealed that Piper was Jason’s biggest cheerleader. Yet somehow her saying it at that moment made it strike a chord in him that Jason wasn’t aware he had. He felt himself flushing and forced his stare down at the hardwood beneath his feet.  
  
“Thanks,” he said quietly.  
  
She pulled him into a surprisingly strong hug, and even though he would see her again at the party, he felt like that was her way of saying goodbye.   
  
“Take care of Tempest,” was all she said before she pulled on her shoes and walked out the door.  
  
\---  
  
Later that night, Strange Thing Number Three happened. Jason had sort of hoped that they would stop after Piper left, since he was sure that his mood would have kept him from seeing things that weren’t there and all that fun stuff. He felt dull around the edges, staring into space for almost a good half hour after she left, his mind sorting through all his stray thoughts again. By the time the sun had set and the glow of Upper East Side began to rise outside his window, he was practically vegetative, not in the mood to move or unpack or watch his new cat follow something that _wasn’t there_.  
  
Scratch that last one. He was suddenly _very much_ in the mood to watch that.  
  
Tempest had been sound asleep on the couch up until that point, curled up in a giant ball of fluff that just kept the cloud comparisons coming. Then he had uncoiled like a string, stretching himself out without even getting up.   
  
Something had caught his attention rather suddenly, causing the cat to turn his head toward the window. At first Jason guessed that it was the sound of a car door shutting or a taxi honking, but his guess was quickly wiped away when Tempest’s head slowly turned, like he was watching someone cross the room. Then he gave a soft ‘ _mrr_ ’ sound before getting up and jumping off the couch, landing soundlessly on the floor. Jason watched as he trotted over to the TV, then slowly walked back toward the window.  
  
 _Definitely_ like someone crossing the room.  
  
“I’m just tired,” Jason whispered to himself, trying to reason out as to why Tempest was practically weaving figure-eights for no apparent reason. “I’m tired and this is a new cat who might not be all there because _I’m_ certainly not.”  
  
 _Not quite!_ his brain unhelpfully supplied. Right, weird shapes in the corner of his eye, unexplainable chills, a rogue television, disembodied laughter, and now a cat with some sort of freaky-weird ESP thing going on. Maybe it was the episodes of _Supernatural_ talking, but Jason’s heart was already skipping beats and his stomach felt like it had been flash frozen.   
  
“Listen,” he muttered, more to his apartment than anything else. _Great job, Grace. Talking to yourself and now talking to nothing at all. That’s perfectly sane_ , he chastised himself. “If there’s a ghost in my apartment, can you leave or something? This hasn’t exactly been an easy move so it’d be pretty great if you stopped messing with me or my stuff or... my cat.”  
  
Not exactly the speech that would land him in politics, but Tempest stopped circling around thin air and began cleaning his tail with a gusto. Either Jason had somehow exorcised a ghost using less than stellar word choice (lacking in Latin, specifically) or the cosmic something-or-another decided it was done making a joke of him and decided to give him a break. Either way, it was a relief, and Jason almost had to laugh at himself over it.   
  
“Right. _Ghosts_ ,” he breathed, running a hand through his hair. “No more late nights for me, right Tempest?”  
  
Tempest didn’t look up. Regardless, it was a pretty clear signal that Jason was better off calling it a night.  
  
He went to bed on a bed set-less futon (the beauty of moving in New York, but that was a phone call for tomorrow), trying to replace thoughts of apartment ghosts with distracting ones like walking tacos and the chestnut trees at Loreley’s or his friends taking dares and stomping around in fountains at bars. At some point, those thoughts and the sounds of late night Manhattan traffic lulled him to sleep.  
  
Whereas Tempest purred in the living room, arching his back like a hand was stroking the fur along his spine.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Jason gets a roommate he didn't know he had all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, new chapter! Finally Nico appears and the slapstick humor/heart-wrenching tragedy can begin! Yeah!
> 
> Also, a few teensy things to add. I fixed a few errors (continuity and grammar) in the last chapter, so there's that. And if anyone was curious, Tempest the Cat is a Nebelung, which is an absolutely gorgeous breed of cat. They vary in poofiness, but they're all enormous fluffy babies, and it's wonderful. Finally, although I enjoyed writing this chapter, I had two problems. One was making Jason's reaction realistic, and the other was thinking I made their entire interaction move too fast. If anyone minds telling me their thoughts on it, I'd be very pleased. ;w; Thank you and enjoy!

Jason’s dreams were _weird_. Not in that way like when he dreamt that he and Leo were zombie hunters except Leo’s weapon of choice was a bat made of salami. They were weird in the way that Stephen King might pay good money for, except Jason wasn’t entirely sure what directions his dreams were taking in the first place.  
  
In his dream, he was standing outside his apartment at night, except it must have been nearly winter as all the trees were completely barren. Despite that, Jason didn’t feel _anything_. He didn’t get the urge to cross his arms and shiver, regardless of the fact that he was wearing only a thin t-shirt and pajama pants. All of his attention was drawn to an ambulance parked near the curb, its lights flashing and rotating, but the EMS didn’t seem particularly adrenaline-laden. One girl was checking her phone while her partner messed with a handle on the back door. It was eerily silent as well, and _that_ made Jason shiver.  
  
He didn’t notice a group of people standing beside him until he heard someone mumble out an unintelligible sentence. Jason turned to see four people, all in various states of dress. A lady in a bathrobe embroidered with kittens chasing each other, a man wearing an NYU hoodie and jeans, and two older men wearing business suits. One of the men was shaking his head slowly before he reached into his sport coat and pulled out a cell phone. He turned his back to the group as he held the phone to his ear.  
  
Jason didn’t hear most of the conversation, except for the man stressing the words, “ _Three days_.”  
  
Upon hearing that, the woman in the bathrobe coughed and turned her head away like she was uncomfortable with the concept. The man in the hoodie frowned and scratched at the stubble on his chin. The other man in the suit just stared at the ambulance passively.  
  
Just as the front doors opened and Jason heard the sound of a stretcher being wheeled out, he woke up.  
  
\---  
  
It might have been some sort of residual from the dream, but even as Jason tried to blink the image out of his eyes, it was _still_ there. Definitely human and _obviously_ in his apartment where he lived _alone_.  
  
If Jason had been in any less of a state, he would have screamed.  
  
Instead he gave out some pathetic grunting sound and shuffled backward in his bed until his head hit the wall with a painful _thud_. Even with his own version of physical percussive maintenance, the guy standing in his room didn’t disappear. Actually, he looked kind of amused.  
  
Being fresh out of sleep, Jason’s vocabulary took a sharp turn downward. What would have been two different sentences consisting of, “Who the hell are you?” and “What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” became, “Who the hell my _apartment_?”  
  
The man shifted a little and let out a sort of strangled noise. A laugh? Jason didn’t know, and as his conscious came back in full swing, he didn’t care either. There was some dude in his apartment and that was a very big problem.  
  
At first glance, he didn’t look too out of place. Kind of that whole ‘college student with a paper due tomorrow morning and only half of it’s written’ look. If anything, he looked like he had stayed the night without telling Jason, dressed in only a plain black hoodie and gray sweatpants. Then Jason actually got the chance to really _look_. The man’s black hair was almost to his chin, caught in a half-wave half-curl and almost obscuring his eyes. From what Jason could actually see, his eyes were almost as dark as the rest of his ensemble, dark circles forming half-moon shapes underneath them. His skin had a worrying pallor, and if Jason was any good at medical guesses, he would say that slightly blue lips weren’t a good look on anyone.  
  
Conclusion: there was a very strange man in his apartment and he was probably on drugs.  
  
At some point, Jason’s brain actually registered the thought that he should do or say something aside from gawk at the stranger. _Yes Virginia, that’s a man you don’t know standing there_ , the message said. It was enough to get Jason to sort of jump-tumble off of his futon and cross the room to where his cell phone was charging. He picked it up like it was a weapon, glaring holes at the stranger who was observing him in a surprisingly passive way for someone who was breaking and entering.  
  
“Okay, who the hell are you?” Jason finally said, minutely congratulating himself for piecing together a complete sentence. Good for not having caffeine in his system yet.  
  
The man leaned against the wall like he owned the place and tilted his head up a little. “Could ask the same of you,” he said, as casual as if they’d talked a hundred times. His voice was on the young adult-deep end, with a strange gravelly tone that seemed familiar to Jason, but he wasn’t willing to guess why. Kind of busy freaking out, actually.  
  
“I _live_ here,” he shot back. “I own this apartment.”  
  
The man raised an eyebrow. “Well, hey, small world. So did I.”  
  
 _Did?_ Definitely on drugs. Tactic switch was needed.  
  
“Alright, listen, I can call the cops right now and I’m sure they’d get help for you. I mean, either way, I’m going to call the cops, but less resistance is pretty optimal, right?”  
  
The man let out a sort of staccato hiss between his teeth before sighing and shaking his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”  
  
Jason didn’t say anything. He just readied his thumb over the 9 key.  
  
“I’m _dead_ ,” the man said, like he was talking about the weather. “Ghost. Revenant. Specter. What ever you want to call me. You just so happen to be living in my apartment, and somehow you can see me.”  
  
If the past few days didn’t put Jason’s common sense in a headlock, he would have called the police so fast he probably would have broken his phone in the process. Instead, he lowered his phone and gaped at the man. “What?”  
  
“I mean if you called the police now, they’d probably take _you_ in for pointing at nothing and saying that it broke into your apartment.”  
  
Jason didn’t want it to make sense. Ghosts weren’t real, and despite his TV acting up and his cat following things and apparently his own eyesight betraying him, there was a vein of logic and reason that was dead set on trying to convince him otherwise. But the guy looked like he definitely had seen better days, and Jason had a hard time imagining that someone that couldn’t be much older than him would be breaking into apartments for no apparent reason, let alone openly talk about it.  
  
Evidently, Jason was taking too long staring at him rather than saying anything or calling the NYPD. The man just shrugged and started walking into the living room, pausing once to scratch at the back of his left leg with his right foot before he sat down on the couch. _Like he lived here_ , Jason thought. Not entirely sure what else to do (call the cops and get laughed at or just stare at someone who was possibly not among the living), Jason wandered in after him. His mind was going about eighty places at once, and not getting anything solid and conclusive in return. No matter how he approached it, there was a _stranger_ in his _apartment_ , and it was really weird.  
  
Tempest took the opportunity to jump off the end of the couch to land by the stranger’s feet. The cat mooched up against his legs, purring loudly before winding back and forth around them. In figure-eights. Just like he had done the night before.  
  
“Holy...” was all Jason got out.  
  
The man glanced up at him before watching the cat. “Not the first time. Cat’s are kind of perceptive.”  
  
“You weren’t kidding.”  
  
“About being dead? Nope.” Again, he said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, like every New York apartment had a resident ghost in it. “I like your cat, though.”  
  
Tempest purred.  
  
There was a logical roadblock that was still keeping Jason from figuring it out. What was he supposed to do about it? Would the guy eventually leave or disappear or step into the light or something?  
  
 _Alright, let’s run with him being a ghost. Just leave it at that for the moment_ , he thought. _What do you say?_  
  
“So, you’re dead.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“Beats me.”  
  
Jason raised an eyebrow as he took one of the chairs from the dining room and brought it into the living room to sit across from the man. He would have sat on the couch, but the idea of sitting with a dead guy kind of bothered him. “You don’t know how you died?” he asked as he sat down.  
  
The man shrugged as Tempest jumped up beside him, headbutting his wrist. His expression didn’t change from its complete neutrality as he pet the cat. “I remember three days before I died, and then three days after. So, I’m missing six days.”  
  
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Jason asked.  
  
Another shrug. “It’s been over a year since I died. I worried about that in the first month.”  
  
A _year_? It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if the man said he had been haunting the place for ten years, but a year made Jason want to call Travis Stoll up right that minute and demand an explanation. It also reminded him that the apartment had been on the market for two weeks by the time he saw the ad. “Did someone else live here before me?”  
  
The man nodded, running his fingers down Tempest’s back, causing the cat to arch to an impressive degree. “Some business lady fresh out of a divorce.”  
  
“And she...?”  
  
“Left.” Simple as that.  
  
That explained why the rent was so cheap.  
  
 _You’re missing the most obvious question_ , the mental banter continued. Jason bent over and rested his elbows on his knees. The ghost, on the other hand, looked like a little kid ready to watch some Saturday morning cartoons in his pajamas. Honestly, how old was this guy? “What’s your name?” Jason finally asked, as his mental self firmly kicked him for not asking right off the bat. He supposed he was a little preoccupied with physics (both regular and meta) being bent.  
  
“Nico,” the ghost said.  
  
“Nico...?” Jason trailed off expectantly.  
  
“Just Nico. That’s all you need to know.” His tone was clipped and stern, although Jason wasn’t going to be the first one to challenge one of the undead. If movies had anything to say for it, they could be a little bit temperamental.  
  
On that note, he wasn’t going to be rude. “Alright, and I’m--”  
  
“Jason Grace. Yeah, I know,” Nico replied, focusing more on Tempest curling up beside his hip.  
  
“You know?” Jason asked, baffled.  
  
Nico rolled his eyes. “Just because you can just _now_ see me doesn’t mean I haven’t been here the whole time. I heard you on the phone with the cable guy. The one who thought your last name was Chase.”  
  
For some reason, that weirded out Jason more than all the weird things that had happened around his apartment. For the few days he had been living there, Nico was a constant invisible fixture. Nothing Jason did was completely private. Rather than voice the strangeness, he narrowed his eyes instead. “And what exactly have you seen?”  
  
“Not you showering or changing, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Nico said flatly. “I respect privacy.”  
  
Good manners for a dead guy. Color Jason impressed.  
  
The thing was, Jason could have played Twenty Questions all day, but there was an obvious obstacle. There was a ghost in his apartment. A ghost who had, up until that morning, been completely invisible but not opposed to interfering. If said ghost was going to hang around in that manner for the rest of Jason’s residence, there were going to be some issues, aside from the obvious problem that yes, Nico was a _ghost_. Jason had to restate that at least eight times to himself to make sure he wasn’t still asleep. He pinched himself in the leg twice for good measure.  
  
There was still some seismically huge part of him that was trying to crest the surface, preparing to launch into a frenzy of _That is a ghost! In your apartment! Scream more!_ However, part of that was muted by the fact that Nico seemed so damn _calm_. Any other time, Jason would have expected an encounter with a ghost to be filled with clattering chains and weird misty silhouettes, coupled with flickering lights and disembodied groaning. Nico was tangible, for one thing. Aside from the death-pallor and the sunken eyes, he didn’t look any different from a tired college student. Maybe it was just the dissonance with Jason’s expectations that was defusing the situation.  
  
Still, _ghost_. Kind of went with the surprise of getting a cat.  
  
“So,” Jason started, mulling it all over while Nico looked on with one raised eyebrow. “What exactly are we going to do about this?”  
  
“Not sure what you mean.”  
  
“First, can you leave this apartment at all?”  
  
Nico shook his head before pausing and shrugging. “Sometimes. On certain days,” he said, sounding unsure. “Most of the time, I can’t leave. I always try and once in awhile I can get out into the hallway and onto the stairwell. Beyond that, nothing.”  
  
The image of a young Patrick Swayze passed through Jason’s mind without warning. Recalling old 90s movies wasn’t his idea of researching. “I don’t know if it’s a sensitive subject, but... passing on?”  
  
“Would’ve done it by now. Believe me,” he replied sullenly.  
  
Jason figured as much. From what he knew of ghosts (again, mostly from movies), the reason they existed at all was an inability to pass on. Either something was keeping them there or they had unfinished business. Patrick Swayze returned to his mind’s eye, this time with his arms encircling Demi Moore and covered in pottery stains. Nico didn’t seem like the early 90s romance type, though.  
  
“Right,” Jason continued. “So that leaves us with the same question. What are we going to do about this? I live here and evidently you can’t leave. That’s an issue.”  
  
Nico didn’t say anything, allowing a stiff silence to pass between them. Only gentle purring from Tempest permeated it.  
  
“Just work around me,” Nico finally said, gently scratching a spot behind Tempest’s left ear. “That’s what you’ve been doing up until now. I don’t do a whole lot anyway.”  
  
Jason couldn’t ignore the forlorn tone that the last sentence took on. It made him wonder how much there was to do in an apartment for a year. In that vein of thought, it was no surprise that Nico had messed with his TV.  
  
“It was easy when I couldn’t see you,” Jason replied, still a little baffled that he was saying something in that context. If this was a permanent thing, he wasn’t sure he could get used to it. “I know what it’s like to have a roommate, and it’s never as easy as _working around_ someone.”  
  
Nico’s hand stilled over Tempest’s fur, causing the cat to look up in irritation. “Roommate?” Nico repeated.  
  
Again, Jason couldn’t believe he was saying it. “Yeah. I live here. You... exist here. I think that defines coexistence.”  
  
If Jason had to pick a word to describe Nico’s expression at that moment, he would have been debating over using _frustrated_ and _scared_. They didn’t go together well, but it defined his countenance perfectly. Although being scared seemed like an oxymoron, being a ghost and all.  
  
“And none of this freaks you out?” he asked, furrowing his brow as he said it.  
  
“Believe me, I’m pretty close to freaking out,” Jason replied honestly. “I just... I think I don’t know how to react to all of this, actually.”  
  
“You’re taking it better than the last person did.”  
  
“Compliment accepted,” Jason said, unable to help a smile from working onto his face. “So, roommates?”  
  
“I guess,” Nico said, pointedly staring at a spot on the floor.  
  
It was going to be weird, Jason knew, but Nico wasn’t exactly saying no. Not like he could have said much of anything against it, unless he planned on spending the rest of his ghost-life completely out of Jason’s view, perhaps in the utility closet.  
  
\---  
  
After their agreement, or what ever Jason wanted to call it, he excused himself to the bathroom for a moment, leaving Nico and Tempest curled up on the couch. As he closed the door, he felt like all the breath had been knocked out of him. Now that Nico was out of sight, it all came back in a rush.  
  
 _Ghost. Apartment. Real._ was the general flow of information through his brain. It felt like he was choking on it and he had to sit on the edge of the bathtub with his head in his hands to even feel like he was on solid ground at all.  
  
He had just held the closest thing to a normal conversation with a ghost that anyone had possibly achieved before, unless all ghosts were like Nico. Still, there were no EVPs or whacked out technology involved. It was as civil and typical as a conversation over lunch with Piper. It was just in his apartment with a dead stranger, so, y’know, perfectly normal.  
  
That left his mind reeling. Just like the first day he had stepped into the apartment, everything had that off-kilter feel. It was so odd and bizarre that Jason wondered how he was _supposed_ to react. He guessed he could have ran out into the hallway screaming, but that wouldn’t have been productive. What might have been more productive was calling either Travis or the landlord and demanding some sort of recompense before hauling himself to a hotel for the night. Saying something along the lines of, ‘You didn’t tell me anyone had died in my apartment!’ might have got things moving, but that also wouldn’t have made Nico disappear. Jason would still know he was there and that he had seen a ghost as clear as day.  
  
At the end of it all, Jason just ended up making an irritated guttural groaning noise.  
  
Again, the question of what to do next came about. Screaming and calling the landlord was out of the question at the moment. Forward progress was the next best thing. Taking Nico out of the equation, what was on the agenda?  
  
The housewarming party.  
  
Jason let out another groan and lowered his head so far down that he could rest his forehead on his knees. He couldn’t call it off, especially when Piper and Leo had been so excited about it. Then again, how was he supposed to have a party when Nico was there? Jason went ahead and guessed that no one else would be able to see him. Unless he told Nico to just sit out of the way somewhere, but that led to the issues of either making Nico mad or leaving Nico out, which seemed kind of wrong somehow.  
  
First things first. With all that in mind, Jason couldn’t go on without actually getting to know Nico. It worked that way with Leo. Yes, they had chatted on Skype before Jason moved, but they spent almost two whole days in the Rivington apartment bonding over cheeseburger-flavored potato chips (Jason mourned the day they were discontinued) and an almost endless game of Skyrim. Unfortunately, Jason had neither object in the apartment now, but that wasn’t going to stop him. How it would help him with the housewarming party was debatable, but he figured that if they knew each other better (a _ghost_ , his mind added for the eleventh time), it wouldn’t be as hard to subtly direct Nico around the living.  
  
Despite not actually using the bathroom at all, Jason flushed the toilet and ran the sink for a few seconds before walking back out to the living room. Nico hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch, but Tempest had shifted so that he was resting his head on Nico’s knee. Jason didn’t want to imagine how that would look if he was still unable to see Nico.  
  
“Did you get sick?” was the first thing Nico asked as Jason sat back down.  
  
“Oh.” Yep, he had groaned pretty loudly. “No, not really. Just. Nevermind. Anyway, so I think I figured something out.”  
  
“Enlighten me,” Nico said dully.  
  
“I have a housewarming party in two days--”  
  
“I know. I heard Piper talking about it,” Nico interrupted.  
  
Right. Nico had been around for everything. “Anyway,” he continued. “Obviously it’s not going to go as planned. Things like that never do. But now there’s _you_ here, so...”  
  
He almost missed a flash of disappointment on Nico’s face. His shoulders dropped a fraction and his entire body language seemed to suggest he was trying to press himself back into the couch. “I’ll stay out of the way, I promise,” he said quietly.  
  
Just saying that spoke a volume for his character.  
  
“No, _no_. I was going to say I kind of want you to be a part of it,” Jason replied. “They probably won’t be able to see you, but at least you can get to know some of my friends, since you’re probably going to be seeing them regularly after this.”  
  
“Except for Piper,” Nico added. He didn’t seem so bummed out as he had been, fortunately.  
  
“Yeah, except for Piper,” Jason agreed, frowning at the thought. He shook it off, keeping his mind on the matter at hand. “But that doesn’t seem so bad, right?”  
  
Nico shifted in his seat, and resumed staring at the floor again. “Easy to say when you can actually socialize,” he replied.  
  
“You’re socializing with me, though,” Jason pointed out.  
  
“That’s... different,” Nico said, his voice trailing off before he frowned and made a motion like he was tucking himself away in his hoodie. He pulled the collar of it up to his chin and glanced to the side. “You’re one person. That’s going to be a group.”  
  
“Just try? I mean, I know you don’t know me any better than you know them, but if we’re going to be like sitcom roommates or whatever, it should be a mutual effort,” Jason said.  
  
What surprised him was the glare that he suddenly got. Nico’s eyes narrowed, and it allowed Jason to see that his irises were dark enough to be black. He didn’t know if that was a side effect to being dead or Nico had always looked like that, but it was unnerving. “I’d rather not,” he said tersely. There was so much weight on his words that it was almost tangible.  
  
For lack of anything better to do, Jason put his hands up in a surrender gesture. “Okay, okay,” he said, now a little more mindful of his word choice. “You can hide out wherever you want. You don’t have to mingle or anything.”  
  
Nico didn’t say anything, just keeping his glare level with Jason.  
  
Jason put his hands down and frowned in return. “Nico?”  
  
He counted three of his own breaths before Nico spoke again. “I don’t do well in groups,” he muttered into the fabric of his hoodie.  
  
Count that as another thing for Jason to file away.  
  
“You don’t have to be a part of it,” Jason assured. “You don’t even have to look at them if you don’t want to.”  
  
Another breath. “Why are you doing this?”  
  
It was a good question, especially considering that Jason hadn’t known Nico had existed for more than an hour and a half. It was entirely possible that the situation itself was messing with any extension of his common sense. Then again, what else was he supposed to do about suddenly gaining an undead roommate? It was a lot to take in all at once, so it was any wonder than his brain was still holding itself together.  
  
However, there was another answer balancing on the tip of his tongue. “I know how it feels,” he said, really without wanting to. Still, one thing he had learned over the years was that the best way to learn about someone else was to teach them about you. An exchange of personal information. The deeper you wanted to go, the more you had to offer of yourself. He glanced down at the floor and smiled wryly. “Until I moved out here, I didn’t want to be social at all. People expected me to be, for reasons you can probably guess.”  
  
Nico seemed to assess him for a moment before nodding. “Kind of look like the football captain type,” he said.  
  
“Exactly. But I didn’t matter what I wanted to do. I kept getting involved with groups that I didn’t want to be a part of, all because I looked like the type of person to be a leader. It wasn’t until I moved out here that I realized I could get to know people that I _wanted_ to know. That was all Piper’s doing. If she hadn’t hauled me along to meet people, I would have probably kept up that whole introverted thing,” he explained.  
  
It felt good to finally say it to someone other than Leo and Piper, people who knew before he even said a word. Nico watched him, observing and assessing. Again, he didn’t say a word, and Jason figured he wasn’t talkative in life, either.  
  
“I know it’s different for you,” Jason continued, rubbing his wrist as a means of fidgeting. “But if this is going to be a thing that neither one of us can decide on unless _I_ decide to move, then I want to at least get to know you. It worked for me, at least.”  
  
“And you want to do that by having me haunt your housewarming party,” Nico deadpanned, but he didn’t look as angry as before.  
  
Jason managed a smile despite himself. “I wouldn’t put it like that, but yeah, close enough. And not just at the party. Preferably before, too.”  
  
“Well then,” Nico said, settling back into the couch with an expectant expression. “Ask away.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Jason plays Any Three Questions with a ghost, talks about movies, and goes shopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I'm so sorry this took literally over two months to publish. I hit a snag in writing it and thought that working on other projects would help. Eventually, the inspiration hit me pretty hard so here we are! Thank you to everyone (again) for being so patient, and also all the wonderful comments and messages I received. ;w; You're all awesome.
> 
> Not a whole lot else to say about it, other than it was kind of fun to write! I'm also realizing exactly how literal 'slow build' is in connection to this thing. :'D Ah well, it makes it fun. Enjoy!

For some reason, Jason thought that interviewing a ghost would be easy. _They’re dead_ , he figured. There’s not much keeping them from talking about it. However, Nico seemed to defy anything Jason had assumed. For someone who seemed to open to it at first, he had remarkably little to say.  
  
Fortunately, Jason didn’t have to go back to work for another day, as his boss had been merciful when he mentioned moving. Still, he hadn’t been planning to have an interview with a ghost on his day off. He had other boxes he still needed to unpack, towels to be put away, a moving company to call. But there were more pressing matters, like the ghost of a dead boy that was completely resistant to answering questions.  
  
They resumed their earlier positions; Nico curled into the corner of the couch, Jason sitting on one of the chairs brought in from the dining room. Jason couldn’t help but feel like there needed to be a metal table between them and a lightbulb hanging above Nico’s head like he was in a procedural show. Although sweatpants and a hoodie didn’t exactly give the full NCIS feeling.  
  
“Family?”  
  
“Sister.”  
  
Jason frowned. “Just a sister?”  
  
“That’s all you need to know.”  
  
Tempest had effectively slotted himself between Nico and the arm of the couch, purring contently. Nico, on the other hand, looked morose, like the questions were keeping him from doing something important. What would have been a pressing matter to a ghost was beyond Jason. Still, it was going to have to be worth a try.  
  
“ _Sooo_ , college or anything? Or wait, how old are you, anyway? Or... _were_ ,” he said, wincing at the last word.  
  
Nico didn’t look offended so much as he just looked _bored_. “Twenty-two.”  
  
“Okay, so school?”  
  
A shrug. “Sort of.”  
  
“Sort of?”  
  
“It was complicated,” Nico replied. When Jason expected him to continue, all he got was a drawn-out silence. Obviously, Nico wasn’t going to go on.  
  
“Alright, how about hobbies?” It was a broad subject. There had to be _something_.  
  
“Nothing interesting.”  
  
“Really? I mean, I can go off something like stamp collecting. I used to collect feathers as a kid.”  
  
Nico raised an eyebrow, but the rest of his expression didn’t budge. It was like trying to extract information from a cinder block. “Collecting feathers sounds more interesting than anything I ever did,” he replied before turning his attention to the cat.  
  
“I doubt it,” Jason said, crossing his arms over his chest. He was hoping to at least have some kind of springboard to work with, but it was becoming acutely clear that this was going to be more like pulling wisdom teeth than just asking. He tried to think of a good starter, something to spark... _something_. Naturally, Piper was the first thing that came to mind, Jason’s personal patron saint of conversation and social grace.  
  
“Alright, then game time,” he said.  
  
Both eyebrows raised. “Hm?”  
  
“There’s this game Piper and I used to play, if you want to call it that. It’s mostly her thing, but it’s called Any Three Questions. I get to ask you any three questions, and you have to answer them honestly,” he explained.  
  
Nico looked nonplussed. “That doesn’t sound like much of a game,” he said.  
  
“Well, you get to ask any three questions back, so there’s that.”  
  
He seemed to mull it over for a moment before sighing and nodding. “Fine.”  
  
“Cool,” Jason replied, finally feeling like he was getting somewhere. He would have to thank Piper later, although he would leave the part about the ghost out. “Alright, what were you going to school for?”  
  
“Nursing.”  
  
Jason blinked, surprised that it wasn’t something like mortuary science. “Like RN kind of nursing?”  
  
“That’s two questions and yes.”  
  
“That’s not two questions,” Jason shot back.  
  
“Totally is,” Nico replied. “It ended with a question. It counts as two.”  
  
“Hey, you don’t get to make the rules,” Jason ground out, but he let it pass. He would just have to be extra careful with the next one. “Ummm, okay, did you have a job?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Jason stayed silent, waiting for a continuation. Again, it was obvious Nico wasn’t going to go on. “Which was...?”  
  
“You used all three questions,” Nico replied easily.  
  
“Oh, come _on_ ,” Jason retorted in frustration. “You don’t have to get so technical about it!”  
  
“I’m not getting technical. I was just following the rules,” Nico said with a shrug. Tempest purred like a motor beside him. “So, I get to ask three questions now, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jason said grudgingly.  
  
Nico didn’t seem to deliberate before he started asking. As far as Jason knew, it was all just cursory. “Where are you from?”  
  
“California.”  
  
“Figures.”  
  
Jason frowned, tilting his head. “Figures?”  
  
Nico nodded as he scratched a spot at the back of Tempest’s head. “You don’t look like a New Yorker,” he replied.  
  
“I’ve lived here for three years,” Jason said with a challenging tone. “I’ve got the subway system all figured out and everything. I’ve even got my library card.”  
  
If Jason had blinked, he would have missed the barest smirk that formed on Nico’s face. However, it was gone as quickly as it appeared. “Have you ever been outside Manhattan?”  
  
“Yes I have,” Jason said stiffly, feigning hurt at being accused of New York ignorance. “I’ve been to the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. That’s four out of five.”  
  
“So where did you live before you moved here?”  
  
Jason grinned, that being a point of personal pride with him. “I lived right off of Bowery.”  
  
 _That_ made Nico finally look interested. “You lived off Bowery?”  
  
“Yeah, on Rivington. Super tiny street, right next to--”  
  
“Sara Roosevelt Park, yeah. I know exactly where that is,” Nico said, finally diverting his attention from Tempest. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I grew up not too far from there, actually.”  
  
At least it made Jason feel like he was actually getting somewhere. He smiled widely, leaning back in his chair. “Where exactly? I mean, I kind of did the roundabouts of the neighborhood when I first moved it. Kind of tried to familiarize myself with everything so I didn’t look like an idiot.”  
  
“Guess we’re kind of past the point of Any Three Questions, huh?” Nico asked smugly.  
  
“Yeah, I concede, but that’s kind of the point,” Jason replied, laughing to himself. “Mostly it helps in starting a conversation. But yeah, whereabouts?”  
  
“Nolita,” Nico said, although his expression made it seem like he had eaten something sour. “I mean, I hate calling it that since it was some name they came up with to try to get rich people to move in, but it’s definitely different from Little Italy.”  
  
“Dude, I _work_ in Nolita!” Jason replied enthusiastically. “This cocktail place off Mott Street. Not too far from St. Patrick’s.”  
  
It was like Jason had finally struck a gold mine. Nico looked like someone had shocked the life right back into him, his eyes wide, his hands already moving in front of him as he talked as though he was pulling at invisible strings. “We lived in a walk-up on Kenmare Street,” he replied. “Like this really old brick building. Looked like it was going to burn down any second.”  
  
“ _All_ the buildings on Kenmare look like that,” Jason said with a grin. “My roommate said it looked like tenements that never got upgraded.”  
  
“Not too far from the truth, actually,” Nico said, but it didn’t take away any of the shine that had just entered his eyes. Jason guessed it was that feeling of familiarity, which was something he hadn’t personally felt since he had moved to New York in the first place. “But yeah, we lived there for about six years, I think.”  
  
“How old were you?”  
  
Nico had to think about that before shrugging. “I was pretty little when we moved in, so I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I was ten when we moved out, though.”  
  
“Did you stick around the neighborhood?” Jason asked.  
  
At that, Nico leaned back into the couch and frowned. His gestures died down instantly and he rested his hands in his lap. “No. We ended up in some apartment-condo kind of place around here. I hated it,” he said.  
  
“Sounds like me and LA,” Jason replied, trying to urge Nico back to being excited. Sympathizing might not have been the best tactic, but it was all he could think to do. “Everyone always thinks LA is some glitzy Hollywood wonderland or whatever, but once you get to actual residential areas, it has a tendency to look like shit.”  
  
Somehow, that managed to get the tiniest of smirks back onto Nico’s face. “I guessed,” he said quietly. “For some reason, you didn’t strike me as an LA kind of guy, anyway.”  
  
“Nope,” Jason said like it was a status to be proud of. “I’m from Sonoma. Kind of around Wine Country.”  
  
“Sounds nice.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
They fell back into silence, Nico opting to look out the window while Jason stared at the floor. He _had_ gotten something out of Nico, though, so it was a small victory. At least it was enough that he really didn’t have a reason to feel uncomfortable around him. There was nothing frightening about his personality, as far as Jason could tell. Nothing that would denote that he’d suddenly adopt some stereotypical ghost-ish behaviors. He just seemed like another college kid, just with a permanent residence.  
  
Jason also figured that there would be plenty of time to learn more about Nico, so long as they actually _conversed_. He knew what it was like to live with someone but not actually _live_ with them. There had been roommates before that only shared the space, but he never really got to know them. Due to a more _delicate_ situation, he was completely against that happening.  
  
What really would have helped was to know Nico’s full name. At least Jason might have had a chance to Google an obituary. Unfortunately, Nico seemed to be bent on keeping quiet about that. Jason didn’t even know if Nico was his actual name, or a nickname, or an alias, or whatever else it could have been. There was nothing to go on unless he looked up ‘dead nursing student’, which probably would have yielded about a thousand results but nothing to work with. He had to wing it best he could until Nico finally gave in.  
  
\---  
  
After their conversation, Jason decided to take a quick shower. It wasn’t quite noon yet and he still had to go shopping for things for the housewarming party. For that matter, he had a dismal lack of groceries and he figured Piper and Leo were only going to supply enough food for Percy to inhale within an hour. There wouldn’t be anything left to stuff into Tupperware containers and feed Jason for the next week.  
  
The oddest thing was that Jason actually did have to work around Nico like he had done before he could see him. He couldn’t just stop and stare, or pause his life to marvel at the ghost in his apartment. Jason actually did have to function at a normal pace around said ghost.  
  
He thought about that in the shower, staring up at the tilework while massaging conditioner into his hair. What exactly was Nico going to do now? It would have been easier to pass off if Jason knew that Nico had the means of keeping himself occupied, but he literally had _no_ idea what Nico did when no one was there. Mess with the TV, sure, but that seemed like an act of boredom. Since Nico couldn’t go anywhere, it left Jason with the predicament of figuring out what to do. He couldn’t rightly leave Nico to his own devices with a good conscience. If he was going to have a roommate, it was only right to give that roommate his own space.  
  
Jason figured that Nico didn’t need to eat, so he didn’t have to buy groceries for two people (unless Leo decided to drop by once in awhile, and then maybe he did). Nico seemed to be pretty happy to relax on the couch, and although Jason was certain that Nico didn’t need to sleep either, it probably would make him feel better to give him a blanket or something. Tempest was also a good form of entertainment, and ghost and cat already seemed pretty attached. But that still wasn’t _enough_.  
  
 _DVDs,_ was Jason’s first thought. What with the pretty scant price of the apartment and the wonderful bargains at IKEA, Jason at least had the money for a few movies. His collection was pretty much limited to what ever Leo didn’t want to take from their communal DVD pile. Jason would just have to ask Nico what he wanted and make a list off that. Video games might have also been a good idea, since Jason did have a laptop with Steam on it. Hopefully Nico didn’t have the magical ghost power of wiping hard drives like a magnet just by touching it, but it was worth a shot.  
  
With a miniature list of things to do compiled in his head, Jason stepped out of the shower and dried himself off. He wrapped the towel around his waist before thinking better of it and throwing his t-shirt and sweatpants back on. It was done with a sigh of defeat, since he was hoping that with his own apartment, he’d be free to walk around without someone like Leo wolf-whistling at him and calling him ‘Mr. Muscles’. Of course, he didn’t pin Nico as the type to do that, but he also didn’t want to flaunt his half-nudity in front of a ghost. It didn’t seem proper.  
  
He threw his towel into the hamper before opening the door and walking back out into the living room. Nico apparently hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch and was occupying himself by staring out the window, but Tempest had made himself very comfortable by clinging to his left shoulder like a koala. Jason grinned at the sight. “I think he likes you way better than he likes me,” he remarked.  
  
Nico made a soft ‘huh?’ sound as he looked back to Jason, and then glanced down to Tempest. “Oh,” he said before reaching up and stroking his hand down Tempest’s back. “Cats are weird.”  
  
Jason sat down at the other end of the couch, reaching up and raking one hand through his hair out of habit. “So, I’m going grocery shopping later, but I also figured I’d stop somewhere and get you some DVDs or something to keep you occupied when I’m gone. Is that cool with you?”  
  
Nico actually looked _surprised_. “For me?”  
  
Jason nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I’m sure it’s not all cracked up to be to just sit around an empty house all day. You probably get bored, right?”  
  
“Uhh, a little,” Nico replied, looking sheepish.  
  
“Cool. Then hang on a second,” Jason replied, getting up and walking to the kitchen. He grabbed a pad of paper and a pen off the counter that was originally intended for the grocery list. Then, he sat back down and readied the pen. “So, any movies in particular?”  
  
Nico managed to look like he had no idea what to do. His fingers tensed on Tempest’s fur, causing the cat to make a low ‘mrr’ sound of discontent. Nico just took in a deep breath before speaking, “I, umm, well... I like old movies.”  
  
Jason frowned. “Like how old? Are we talking 20s silent movies or--”  
  
“Like Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, that kind of thing. Uh, John Wayne’s pretty good, too?” He suddenly looked flustered. “I mean, I like some action movies, and I liked the Hobbit when you watched, but I screwed it up by trying to turn up the volume.”  
  
At that, Jason glanced up at him with wide eyes. “ _That’s_ what you were trying to do?”  
  
Nico nodded, staring back down at the cat. “Sorry,” was all he said.  
  
“Okay, then I didn’t totally hallucinate someone laughing, right?”  
  
Suddenly, Nico tucked the bottom half of his face into the collar of his hoodie. Jason had to look hard to see it, but he started laughing. “Oh god, it was you.”  
  
“Sorry,” he repeated, trying in vain to hide a grin. “It just got funny when you and Leo were freaking out about it.”  
  
“Jerk,” Jason managed with a smile while writing down the list of actors Nico had given him. “Okay, so old movies, Lord of the Rings kind of stuff. Anything else?”  
  
“Do you have any Marvel movies?”  
  
Jason nodded and gestured to the pile of boxes still stacked up in the dining room. “Yep. I have most of them, all the way up to the last Iron Man movie.”  
  
“Okay,” Nico replied, lifting his face out of his hoodie. “That’s kind of all I can think of right now, but that’s fine, right?”  
  
“More than fine,” Jason affirmed, tapping the list with his pen. “Actually, it kind of works since a lot of old movies are in bargain bins all the time. I mean, that and I’ll probably get Netflix here soon. Leo had it and we used it pretty religiously. Oh, and speaking of, do you like video games?”  
  
Again, it was like something struck the life right back into Nico. It was suddenly very difficult to tell he was dead in the first place. He sat up a little straighter and his body language suggested he was desperately trying to contain himself. “Um, yeah, some of them,” he said, but it wasn’t hard to tell that he was keeping himself from word vomiting out every video game he had ever played.  
  
“Alright, ‘cause I have Steam on my laptop and I’m not opposed to you playing on it so long as you don’t magically wipe my entire computer,” Jason said.  
  
“I don’t think I can do that,” Nico replied, still looking like he was ready to pounce on the opportunity. “What games do you have?”  
  
“Like, both of the _Left 4 Dead_ games, the two _Portal_ games, I think one of the _Assassin’s Creed_ games but I can’t remember which one. I got it at the same time Leo bought it for XBox so we just played it there instead? And I’m planning on getting _Skyrim_ again.”  
  
“Those... those are all pretty good,” Nico managed, seemingly ten seconds away from holding a one man celebration on the end of the couch. “I liked all of the Elder Scrolls series, so yeah, _Skyrim_ would be great.”  
  
Jason grinned, writing it down on the list. “You ever play it?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
He looked up with a conspiratorial smile. “Imperial or Stormcloak?”  
  
His smile was met with an equally conspiratorial glance. “Skyrim belongs to the Nords,” Nico said.  
  
“Rebel scum.”  
  
“Imperial bastard,” was the instant reply.  
  
Jason laughed and Nico hid his smile in his hoodie again. “Alright, can’t wait to see you play that,” he said, finishing up the list. “Any other games?”  
  
Nico sat in silence for a moment, but at least it seemed thoughtful instead of resistant like it had been earlier. “Um, strategy games are cool with me. Like _Civilization_ and stuff like that. I mean, the newest one is pretty expensive so you definitely don’t have to get that.”  
  
“You would spend more than two hours on it, right?”  
  
Without a beat, “Definitely.”  
  
“Done and done, then,” Jason returned, writing it down.  
  
If Nico could have buried himself in his hoodie even more, or retracted into it like a turtle hiding in its shell, he would have done it. “Thank you,” he muttered.  
  
Jason smiled congenially and set the list aside. “No problem. You’re my roommate now and I’m not going to make it the world’s most boring experience for you.”  
  
Nico didn’t say anything, but Jason was pretty savvy on figuring out how other people felt. Piper may have been the more social one, but Jason could read a person without a hitch. There was no doubt that Nico was beyond grateful, and it might have been the first time in a _long_ time where someone had asked him outright what he wanted. Jason just got that sense from him, and it made him want to help Nico out even more, if there was any other way he could.  
  
\---  
  
Jason ended up going to a health food store around the corner from his apartment. He hadn’t explored the neighborhood yet, but from what he could see, Upper East Side had an insatiable addiction to organic food. A lot of it was expensive, so Jason was also grateful when he checked his map app on his phone and saw that there was a CVS down his street and a 7-Eleven a few blocks away. Still, for sake of getting a handle on the neighborhood, he went in the health food store first.  
  
It smelled like a bag of lawn clippings was the first thing he noticed. Everything had an earthy smell, which Jason was accustomed to from the few organic food stores he had been in back in California. The cashier closest to him chirped out a greeting before tucking a lock of bright pink hair behind her ear. He smiled at her before taking a basket and venturing in further.  
  
First, he had no idea why there was so much wheatgrass in _everything_. It was in supplements, drinks, even some food. Then there was an abundance of kale, chia, hemp, and everything else that made Jason suddenly want an extremely greasy fajita. He managed to find a bag of corn chips that looked safe, and found some salsa dip he actually recognized. He also grabbed an assorted vegetable plate, figuring that it might be something Percy would leave alone for just long enough for Annabeth to eat something.  
  
The pink-haired cashier scanned everything, and Jason caught the barest dusting of a blush on her face as she bagged everything for him. That wasn’t entirely uncommon either, although he was more accustomed to Piper telling him that it was just because he had Captain America looks. There might have been a correlation between that and the amount of Marvel movies he had.  
  
He escaped the lawn clipping smell and made his way down the street to the CVS. There, he let out a sigh of relief. Brands he recognized, food full of so much sugar that it could have put a weaker person in a coma, and bargain bins. He got to work, going down the grocery list as well as getting some things for his medicine cabinet. In contrast to the organic corn chips, he got two bags of Cheetos, already foreseeing Annabeth getting after Percy for being covered in cheese dust. Leo wouldn’t be in much of a better state.  
  
Before he checked out, he went over to the movie bargain bin and began digging through it. Just as he had expected, there were a few old movies within Nico’s jurisdiction hidden underneath weirdly-animated 3D kids movies and some off-season Christmas specials. There was even a three-movie John Wayne DVD which was guaranteed to at least take up five or so hours of Nico’s time.  
  
The cashier rang everything up for him before asking him in a bored tone if he had a CVS card. One of the things that Jason had learned very quickly upon moving to New York was that membership cards to places (so long as getting them was free) was a necessity. Saving money where you could was important, and back at Rivington, it wasn’t unusual for the typically lackadaisical Leo to suddenly get very invested in couponing for the week. Jason was yet to get any circulars to his apartment, but he figured he wouldn’t be much better.  
  
He used his card and paid for everything before heading back to the apartment, one arm laden in bags. Eventually, he would have to find a regular grocery store rather than either a wheatgrass utopia or a pharmacy. That was what neighborhood exploration was for, or possibly a good use for a native New Yorker roommate, if he had ever really left the apartment for anything other than work or school.  
  
The doorman and a blast of air conditioning greeted him when he walked in. He waved back with his free arm before going into the elevator.  
  
Getting back onto his floor, he fiddled with the lock and opened it, only to see Nico sitting on the floor wiggling his fingers across the hardwood while Tempest chased them. He froze once he heard the door open and ducked his head down. “Sorry,” he said again. “He just seemed antsy.”  
  
Jason snorted and set the bags down on the floor. “Dude, no issue. You’re keeping him occupied and he’s keeping you company. Anyway, I got a few movies that you might like.”  
  
He reached down and fished them out, handing them to Nico who went through them like he was holding a deck of cards. He held up one that had a cover portraying a rugged cowboy kind of guy against the backdrop of a sepia-toned Western town. “ _High Noon_ is one of my favorites. Thanks,” Nico added, setting the pile down in front of him.  
  
“No problem. Those should keep you busy, right?”  
  
Nico nodded, but turned his head away. “I still don’t know why you’re doing all this. It’s not like I need any of it.”  
  
Jason frowned and shoved the bags into the kitchen with the edge of his foot. “Why wouldn’t I?”  
  
Nico didn’t move, staring down at the floor while Tempest rolled onto his back beside him. “Because I’m dead and I don’t really need anything.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s _entirely_ true. You said it yourself that you get bored sometimes,” Jason remarked, beginning to sort through his groceries. “And you didn’t complain when I mentioned getting video games for you.”  
  
“Well... no. It’s not that I’m not grateful, but...”  
  
There was a long silence before Jason peered around the wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “But?”  
  
“You’re being really nice to me,” he said, phrasing it like that was a problem in of itself.  
  
Jason tilted his head. “That’s an issue?” he asked.  
  
“It’s different,” was all Nico said.  
  
“Well, I’m a different kind of roommate, I guess,” Jason replied, returning to shoving a few frozen dinners into the freezer. “I don’t see the problem with being nice to someone, especially if you’re going to be around them for awhile.”  
  
Nico went quiet again and Jason heard some shuffling before a dark shape appeared in his peripheral. Nico leaned up against the edge of the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Jason realized that Nico wasn’t much taller than him, although the way he hunched over made him look shorter. “I just don’t get it,” he said, not looking at Jason so much as staring down at the oven. “I thought roommates were supposed to be independent. Just people sharing a house.”  
  
“Leo and I weren’t like that,” Jason remarked. “We were roommates, but we’re also pretty good friends.”  
  
“And we just met.”  
  
“So?”  
  
There was a look of frustration that crossed over Nico’s face. “I don’t think you’re getting this,” he said in a low voice.  
  
Jason just shrugged, shutting the freezer. “If you’re trying to make a point here, then nope, I’m not getting a thing.”  
  
He didn’t even have to look at Nico to know that he was probably rolling his eyes. “I’m _dead_ ,” he stressed.  
  
“Yeah, you mentioned that once or twice,” Jason deadpanned.  
  
“So, I don’t really need anything! I’ve done pretty good by myself,” Nico continued. “People are going to think you’re crazy or something.”  
  
“You said that, too. Except that was when I was going to call the cops on you.”  
  
Jason didn’t think it was necessary for Nico to breathe, but he let out a sigh regardless. “There’s no reason for you to go out of your way to entertain me, or what ever you’re doing.” He paused, giving the floor a hard staredown. “Like I said, not like I’m not grateful.”  
  
“Then there shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Jason said, making Nico look up at him in confusion. He shrugged again, opening the refrigerator. “You’re grateful, I’m more than happy to do this kind of thing, even if you think that being dead and just meeting are obstacles. This isn’t like medieval torture or anything.”  
  
“You say ‘being dead’ like that’s something that happens everyday,” Nico returned, still sounding baffled.  
  
“Well, that’s something I _am_ going to deal with everyday, so might as well get used to it at the start, yeah?” Jason replied, glancing at the expiration date on a package of hummus.  
  
Nico went right back to being quiet, but this time it seemed more like something caused by being driven to a lack of things to say.  
  
Jason waited for a moment, tucking away the salsa dip and a package of tortillas before he looked at Nico, who was pointedly looking everywhere _but_ Jason. “Okay, do you know how to make any party food?” he asked.  
  
“...Party food?”  
  
“Yeah, like seven layer dip or whatever.”  
  
Nico _really_ looked like anything he might have said was promptly steamrolled and disposed of. He blinked owlishly before shrugging. “I, uh, can make spaghetti pretty well.”  
  
“Cool,” Jason said, reaching into one of the bags and pulling out a glass jar of tomato sauce. “I’ve got the stuff for that if you’re willing to help out.”  
  
“You’re alright with a dead guy making food?”  
  
“What are you going to do, poison it?”  
  
“No, but...” Nico trailed off. If he had any blood in his face, Jason wondered if he would have blushed. “I don’t know, it might be bad luck or something.”  
  
“Ah, well, makes life more interesting.”  
  
More silence, but hardly anything morose. Then, Nico reached across and grabbed the tomato sauce. “I don’t think your life needs to be any more interesting than it is,” he said, glancing over the back of the jar. “You’re going to need some olive oil if you don’t want it to taste like crap.”  
  
That made Jason grin, and he reached up to one of the cabinets to see if they had any. “Good to know,” he said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Jason has another weird dream, debates the exact definition of espresso, has a ghostly conflict, and comes to a conclusion he should have come to on Day One.

Jason _knew_ that he was having a dream. It was similar enough to the dream he had had about the EMS outside of the apartment that he was at least able to pick out the pattern. The weather looked like it would have been winter, but Jason didn’t feel a thing. The entire world looked like the color had been drained right out of it. And once again, he was standing in front of a building with people who didn’t acknowledge his existence.   
  
It wasn’t the apartment, though. The building in front of him was an imposing stone-faced skyscraper, familiar only in that it would have easily blended in with others just like it in the Upper East Side. The structure seemed lifeless, windows dark, doors clearly locked. The only notable thing was a massive archway with columns that looked like they belonged in the Parthenon, and a triangular roof with the faces of three dogs carved into its center, their stone eyes wide and their mouths opened in grotesque grimaces. _That_ was a little more strange, and Jason only tore his eyes away from the unusual architecture to look over at the address plate near the front door.  
  
However, there _was_ no address. It was like someone had blotted it out like water on ink, smeared away so there was no way to tell what the building was; just streaks of black on a bronze plaque. For some reason, it made Jason uneasy.   
  
Around him were businesspeople and tourists, paying no heed to the building. They just walked up and down the sidewalk, talking on their phones or checking their watches. As far as it appeared, the building didn’t exist.  
  
Then, Jason got it in his head that he should try opening one of the doors. He walked up to one of them, trying to peek in through the glass. Like the rest of the windows, the interior was dark. He attempted to pull the handle, only to feel like someone had sent a current of electricity up his spine. Instantly, Jason jumped away, holding his hand close to his chest, frantically looking for what ever had hurt him.  
  
“ _You don’t belong here,_ ” a voice said, seemingly from all around him. It wasn’t any voice he had ever heard, more like the voice of an older man, his tone low and dark. “ _You need to leave._ ”  
  
\---  
  
He woke up to his phone buzzing incessantly next to his head, and it took more effort than he was willing to give to finally grope around and grab it.   
  
“M’hello?”  
  
“Morning, sunshine!” Leo’s voice greeted him. “You sound awake and perky.”  
  
“Mornin’, Leo,” Jason managed, using his other hand to rub at his eyes before he pushed himself up into a sitting position on the futon. Once his vision didn’t seem like he was trying to swim through an aquarium, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Nico sitting in the opposite corner, watching him with an eyebrow raised. Unfortunately, Jason let out an ‘ _ah!_ ’ before he could control it.  
  
“Jace? You okay?”  
  
Jason fumbled with the phone before laughing nervously. “Sorry, dude. Cockroach.”  
  
Nico frowned and mouthed ‘cockroach?’ at the same time Leo went, “Woah, a cockroach? Don’t you have a fancy Upper East Side apartment?”  
  
“Uh, I guess it has to be a New York thing,” Jason excused as Nico rolled his eyes. “Anyway, what’s up?”  
  
“Got the day off!” Leo announced cheerfully. “Boss man’s got all the help he needs for today and he figured I could use some time off. Lucky for you, that means I get to come over!”  
  
“ _Now?_ ”  
  
Leo snorted. “Yeah, _now_. Calypso’s at work and all the breakfast I make can feed like, six people. That, and she doesn’t like cayenne pepper. So, like I said, lucky for you!”  
  
Jason groaned and pulled the blankets off of him, struggling to his feet and fighting to find some semblance of balance. “Give me like, a half hour, okay? I need coffee.”  
  
“Aw, but I make the best kind! You don’t need any of that watery Folgers crap.”  
  
“Leo, I like my coffee where I can’t stand my spoon up in it.”  
  
Another snort. “ _Weak._ ”  
  
“Half an hour,” Jason pressed, fixing a fold in his pajama pants.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Go make yourself pretty.”  
  
“Will do,” Jason said before hanging up. He sighed and dropped the phone on the futon before running a hand through his hair.  
  
“Getting a visitor?” Nico quipped from his corner.  
  
Jason nodded and kicked the remainder of the blankets that were in a tangle on the floor back onto the bed. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”  
  
“No problem,” Nico replied with a shrug. Then, he looked up with a quizzical expression. “A _cockroach_ , though?”  
  
With a crooked grin, Jason scratched at the back of his neck. “Hey, so sue me. I’m not at one hundred percent first thing in the morning.” Then, he tilted his head. “Anyway, why are you sitting there? I thought the couch would be more comfortable.”  
  
“I don’t sleep,” Nico said, stretching his legs out in front of him. “And this was my bedroom once. I guess I’m kind of more drawn to it than the living room.”  
  
Jason felt a momentary surge of panic. “You didn’t... die in here, right?”  
  
Nico scoffed and turned his head to look out the window. “No. At least, not that I know of.”  
  
“You didn’t watch me sleep or anything, right? I mean, I’m all for romantic gestures or whatever, but none of that Twilight crap,” Jason replied, grinning.  
  
He wasn’t expecting Nico to duck his head down like he was trying to hide his face. “No,” he mumbled. “I didn’t.”  
  
Jason blinked before frowning and taking a step closer to Nico. “Hey, are you okay? I was just kidding. I mean, if you’re a Twilight fan, more power to you?”  
  
He saw Nico’s eyes widen before he defaulted to frantically waving his hand toward Jason, which manifested as the sleeve of his hoodie flopping around. It would have made for an amusing image if Jason wasn’t concerned. “I’m _fine_ ,” Nico stressed, pausing and lowering his hand. He looked horrified at himself, and then his expression slowly sank to an obviously embarrassed one. “Just, uh, I don’t know. Not at... one hundred percent?” he tried, shrugging at the end.  
  
Jason frowned, still slightly concerned, before he offered the barest smile. “Can you drink coffee?”  
  
Nico actually seemed to consider it a moment before he gave a hesitant wince and shrugged. “I haven’t tried. I kind of doubt I could, though.”  
  
“No hurt in trying, right?” Jason offered.  
  
Again, there was a moment of consideration, and then Nico narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “It better not be that movie thing where a dead person drinks something and it goes right through them.”  
  
“You’re thinking about Pirates of the Caribbean, aren’t you?”  
  
Nico’s expression didn’t flinch. “I did really well on keeping the hardwood clean when I was alive,” he said with a warning tone.  
  
Jason just huffed out a laugh before walking out into the living room. Tempest was at his heels in seconds, yowling at a surprising volume for a cat.   
  
“Yeah, yeah. Give me a second, cat. Homeowner’s breakfast first, and then yours,” Jason said, running a hand through his hair.   
  
He switched on the coffee maker the moment he walked into the kitchen. Then, he slumped against the counter and yawned, lowering his head down so his forehead touched the countertop. Tempest just wound around his ankles, headbutting him and meowing so loud that Jason didn’t hear Nico walk in until Tempest suddenly abandoned him. Jason turned his head to see Nico staring at him, putting his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie while nodding toward him.  
  
“Nice hair.”  
  
“Thanks. Worked on it all night,” Jason replied, slowly (and reluctantly) standing up straight.   
  
The coffee maker sputtered a few times before hissing out a steaming stream of coffee into a waiting mug. Jason sighed in contentment at the sheer sight of it.  
  
“So, Leo’s coffee isn’t that good?” Nico quipped from beside him, hovering just at the edge of the kitchen.  
  
Jason cringed and shook his head. “Like, I don’t know if they do something different in Texas or what. Maybe he was raised by cowboys or something. _No one_ should make their coffee the way he does,” he explained, shuddering at the thought. He was glad that at least with his coffee maker, he never had to see the grounds if he didn’t want to. Leo’s coffee had enough dregs at the bottom of it to form a small hill.   
  
“Oh,” Nico replied with a shrug. “I liked espresso back when I actually drank stuff.”  
  
Jason laughed, if not a bit mirthlessly. “Hey, espresso’s tolerable. I like a shot or two of it at Starbucks.”  
  
He didn’t exactly expect Nico to make a sudden noise of discontent. Jason turned to see Nico now being the one cringing. His shoulders were raised nearly to his ears. “ _Gross_ ,” was all he said.  
  
“What? You said you liked espresso!”  
  
Nico was quick to shake his head, taking a step back like a snake was rearing up at him. “I’m not talking about _that_ kind of espresso. Starbucks is like straight up sugar in a cup.”  
  
“What other kind of espresso _is_ there?” Jason asked, managing to achieve an offended look.   
  
“The right kind,” Nico said with a frown. “You know, you make it in a coffee kettle on the stove and all that?”  
  
Jason stared at him, completely nonplussed. “That doesn’t sound like espresso at all.”  
  
“It’s not the shots they give you at Starbucks,” Nico explained, rolling his eyes. “That’s kind of the weird American version of it.”  
  
At that, Jason’s interest got piqued again. “So, what? You’re not American.”  
  
“I wasn’t actually born here, no,” Nico conceded, although he looked irritated at the thought of it.   
  
“But your accent--”  
  
“Is completely one hundred percent American, yeah. I didn’t grow up overseas.”  
  
Jason leaned against the counter while his coffee cooled. Any development with Nico definitely overshadowed the need for a caffeine jolt. “Okay, let me guess...” he trailed off, looking up thoughtfully. “Greek?”  
  
Nico snorted indignantly, crossing his arms over his chest. “No.”  
  
“Hey, cut me some slack. I always hear names like that at Greek restaurants,” Jason retorted with a grin.  
  
“That’s with a K, not a C.”  
  
“Fine. So probably somewhere that’s Mediterranean, right? I’m gonna go with Italian.”  
  
All Nico did was nod.  
  
“Awesome!” Jason continued, mostly thrilled that he uncovered something that had to be pretty sizeable about Nico. “I mean, I was going to go with that first since you said you lived in Nolita, but I didn’t want to be all typical about it? Like, that place has all sorts of cross-cultural stuff going on, so heck, you could’ve been like, ‘No, Jason, I’m actually Swedish’ and I might’ve believed you.”  
  
It was Nico’s turn to look nonplussed, and he did a very good job of it. “I’m not Swedish,” was all he said.  
  
“No, no, I know that. I’m just saying. Didn’t want to be one of those douches.”  
  
“I’m... glad?”  
  
“Good,” Jason replied, taking the coffee cup with both hands. He took an experimental sip of it, finding it to be nearly the perfect temperature, if not on the warm side. Satisfied, he leaned back against the counter again. “Okay, so you were born in Italy. Where exactly?”  
  
Nico sighed like it was a bother to even answer the question. “Venice,” he said.  
  
It managed to conjure up dozens of images of gondolas meandering idyllic canals glimmering in the sun, as well as plazas filled with pigeons. Jason grinned at the thought, even if it was hard to mentally place someone like Nico in a city like Venice, which Jason was more prone to associate with vacation destinations and postcards. “That’s like... wow,” Jason said eloquently. “Do you remember anything about it?”  
  
Nico frowned, paused a moment, and then shrugged. “I remember parts of my house, but that’s it. We moved here when I was like, four.”  
  
“So do you speak Italian at all?”  
  
Nico put his right hand out and tilted it from side to side; a noncommittal ‘sort of’ gesture. “Basic sentences, mostly. I can read it better than I can speak it.”  
  
“That’s still pretty cool, though,” Jason admitted, taking another sip of his coffee before setting it on the counter. “I only know like, preschool-level Spanish from high school, and I forgot most of that anyway.”  
  
It was another moment where Jason was certain that if there was any blood in Nico, he would have blushed. He ducked his head down while pulling his hands into the sleeves of his hoodie. “It’s not that cool,” he replied tersely. “Pretty sure most New Yorkers speak more than two languages fluently.”  
  
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less awesome that you can speak it, or at least retained enough to remember it,” Jason responded.   
  
“Not like it can do me much good now,” Nico said stiffly.   
  
He wasn’t wrong, but Jason still felt uncomfortable with the concept, and like he was on this previously unknown precipice of being polite versus saying something completely out of line. He discovered that saying the right thing to a dead person was oddly difficult. “Yeah, well,” he started, feeling like he was putting some strain on himself. “It’s the thought that counts, right?”  
  
Nico looked unamused. “Sure.”  
  
“Hey, I’m not used to this yet,” Jason said, putting his hands up near his chest in surrender.  
  
“Right. Kudos for trying.”  
  
“ _Grazie_ ,” Jason replied with a grin.   
  
“ _Di niente,_ ” Nico returned, raising an eyebrow.   
  
Jason smiled sheepishly. “Learned that off a pizza box... and _maybe_ from _Inglourious Basterds_.”  
  
Nico looked mildly mortified at that. “Please tell me you mean the old one,” he said.  
  
Instead, Jason crossed his arms over his chest and stuck his chin up. “ _Bawn jorno,_ ” he drawled.  
  
“Don’t,” Nico said immediately, physically bristling. “I know my Italian’s for shit now, but _no._ ”  
  
“Aww, fine,” Jason replied, reaching over and picking up his coffee again. “You’re missing out on one of the best movies ever, though.”  
  
“I could debate that.”  
  
“No debate needed,” Jason said, taking another sip.   
  
\---  
  
Jason drained the rest of his coffee while Nico went back to the living room, sitting in his corner of the couch while Tempest was content to snooze beside him. By Jason’s estimate, he had roughly ten minutes to shower before Leo arrived. Then again, giving Leo a time restriction was like telling him to stop taking apart the remote control for their TV; it couldn’t be done. Leo had a penchant for showing up whenever it suited him, usually at the most inopportune time. Consequently, Jason had to buy two different remote controls to replace the dismantled ones.  
  
He quickly showered, neglecting to turn the bathroom fan on so he could keep an ear out for the front door opening. He was halfway through washing his legs when he heard it open, followed by a jovial shout of, “Gooood morning, superman!” It made Jason regret ever giving Leo a key to the apartment.   
  
“Give me a second, Leo!” Jason called back, rinsing himself off in record time. He switched off the shower and stepped out, hopping around to dry himself before shoving his clothes back on (and ignoring how gross it felt to put clothes on while not completely dried off).   
  
He opened the bathroom door, and turned the corner to see the upper half of Leo’s body hidden “behind the refrigerator door. Jason sighed in defeat and walked out to the kitchen, towel around his neck. “Really? Raiding my fridge as soon as you get here?”  
  
Leo stood up just enough for his eyes to be visible over the top of the door. He nodded once before returning to what ever he was doing. “You went grocery shopping.”  
  
“Yeah, so Percy doesn’t eat my apartment,” Jason said, glancing into the living room. Nico was still bunched up in his corner, watching Leo with a perfectly neutral expression. Jason realized with a shiver that it was the first time that someone would have come into his apartment since he found out about Nico. That also meant that Jason was going to have to pretend Nico wasn’t there. Nico already seemed to be two steps ahead of him, taking up the smallest amount of space and remaining perfectly quiet.   
  
“Hopefully he doesn’t eat all the walking taco stuff,” Leo said, breaking Jason out of his thought process. “Left that on the stove, by the way.”  
  
Indeed he had. Jason peered over him to see a large salad variety plate, except the celery and carrots had been replaced with cheese and shredded lettuce. Two containers of sour cream sat on top of it while the plate was wreathed in at least ten small bags of Fritos.   
  
Leo appeared again, this time with a bag of carrots and a disgruntled expression. He shook the bag near Jason’s face as though Jason had never seen them before. “Really? _Carrots?_ What are you, a rabbit?”  
  
“I can’t eat nacho cheese out of a can every day of my life,” Jason retorted, grabbing the bag out of Leo’s hand and making a show of eating one.

“Gross,” Leo said, scrunching up his nose. He returned to digging through the contents of the fridge. “Anyway, I brought a few parts from the store to see if I can fix your TV. That’s still a thing, right?”  
  
Mid-carrot, Jason blanched and sent a shaky glance over to the living room. Nico just shrugged with an ‘I don’t know’ expression.  
  
“Uh, actually? I haven’t really had any trouble with it since Piper came by. Maybe it was like a power surge or something.”  
  
Leo reappeared, eyebrow raised in suspicion. “Power surge? Man, between that and the cockroach, I’m thinkin’ Upper East Side isn’t all that glamorous.”  
  
“Don’t forget my apartment was stupid cheap,” Jason reminded. _Because it’s haunted_ was left unsaid.   
  
“Dude, file something with the management! Like, pest control’s the bane of NYC apartment owners, right? No one wants to say the place they own has roaches, especially around here. Maybe you’ll get more off your rent or a free utility or somethin’.”  
  
Jason guessed he felt far more nervous than the situation called for. Nico just looked bored.   
  
“I’ll probably do something about that later this week,” Jason said, closing up the bag of carrots and placing it on the other counter. “Like I still have to go back to work and pick up _at least_ one more check before I start doing anything else around here.”  
  
Leo sighed in defeat and closed the refrigerator. Instead, he walked over to the pile of walking taco material and began organizing it. “You shouldn’t have to pay for any of that stuff,” he explained, opening a bag of Fritos and beginning to snack on it. Evidently, he had a loose definition of breakfast. “Like, okay, remember at Rivington when we had the leak?”  
  
“The one that warped the wallpaper?”  
  
“Yeah! I didn’t have to pay anything for that. Management was on that like white on rice. They don’t want us going on some apartment ratings site and giving a bad review. Especially with everyone moving here? Yeah, you’d probably _get_ paid for this kind of stuff.”  
  
Jason stared down at the kitchen tile and sighed through his nose. “Okay. I’ll look into it.”  
  
“Cool. Still gonna look at your TV, though,” Leo said before shoving a handful of Fritos into his mouth. He wiped his hands off on his work pants before walking over to the TV.   
  
It was odd to watch. Nico looked completely disinterested, just regarding Leo like he was someone who came over every day. There wasn’t much of an effort to hide himself or make himself less obvious, even though there wasn’t really a point to that. Leo wouldn’t have been able to see him anyway. He just hummed some salsa-sounding tune while turning the screen sideways to examine the back. It just looked like a bored roommate and a repairman.   
  
After a minute, Leo hissed in pain and held his right hand up. “Ah, sheesh. Got myself on one of the sticky-outy parts here.”  
  
As Leo went over to his toolbox by the front door to get a band-aid, Nico looked up at Jason with a bemused expression. “You sure he knows what he’s doing?” he asked.  
  
Naturally, Leo didn’t hear a thing. He just kept humming while putting the bandage on. While Leo wasn’t looking, Jason nodded.  
  
“Your call,” Nico said before shrugging and settling back into the couch. Tempest laid over his feet, watching Leo with even less interest than Nico. He just let out a quiet ‘mrr’ and stretched out. Jason hoped Tempest wouldn’t decide to get up on Nico like he had done before, otherwise it would look extremely strange (maybe terrifying) to see a cat floating contentedly above the arm of the couch. Fortunately, Tempest seemed more than pleased to nap on a semi-flat surface.  
  
“So, how’s the cat thing going?” Leo asked after he walked back to the TV. “He looks like he’s fitting in okay.”  
  
“Oh, uh. Yeah,” Jason replied, keeping on eye on Tempest just in case. “He settled in fine. Just likes sleeping a lot.”  
  
“Actually, I remember I was watchin’ this thing on TV a few months ago?” Leo started, and Jason braced himself for another overly long Leo story. “Like, okay, so this guy calls his wife up like, ‘Yo, our cat’s acting weird and it keeps staring at stuff and so what’s up? Should we take him to the vet?’ And his wife says just to keep an eye on the cat for a little while because cats are weird, right?” Leo paused long enough to duck behind the TV and start working on the wires. “Anyway, cat keeps acting weird and the guy calls again but he also calls the vet just to see if it’s a problem because _woah_ , cat’s really starting to freak out now. Like has his eyes all wide like he’s in a trance. And the vet says something about maybe the cat’s epileptic? I didn’t really know cats could get seizures.”  
  
“Me either,” Jason agreed, although he was starting to get nervous as to where the story was going.  
  
“Okay, so, he brings the cat to the vet, and the cat’s A-OK! Not a problem. They come home and the cat’s acting up again. So the guy thinks, hey! Maybe there’s something up with the house like mold or rats or something. He calls a buddy of his to--” Leo hissed again, shaking his hand out before continuing. “Stupid _wires_. Anyway, calls this friend of his that’s like an Orkin dude to come out and see if they have pests or something. And of course?”  
  
“Nothing,” Jason predicted. From the looks of it, Nico knew where the story was going as well. He rolled his eyes and tucked his hands behind his head.  
  
“Yeah! House is totally clean! But the cat’s still bein’ ridiculous so finally, the guy’s wife is like, ‘Ahhh maybe it’s ghosts!’ Like I guess she heard that cats have like, I dunno, feline ESP. She says she has a friend who knows a psychic pretty well, so the guy’s like, ‘Yeah, why not,’ and they go get the psychic. Lady comes in and goes, ‘ _Woaaahhhhhh_ there’s angry spirits here!’ Like I guess one of those ancient burial grounds or something but the cat could see it?” Leo shrugged and fidgeted with another wire. “But yeah, they had to call a bunch of people. _Cats,_ man. Maybe that’s the problem with this place!”  
  
Jason flinched at that before coughing out a laugh. It sounded too dry to be realistic, but Leo didn’t seem to notice. “Nah, I don’t think so. This building’s new, right?”  
  
Leo glanced up from above the TV. “Didn’t you say something about that one of the times your TV acted up? Like if a place like this could have ghosts?”  
  
“You _did_ say that,” Nico reminded from the couch.  
  
Jason almost told him to shut up, but cleared his throat before he could say anything and just gave Leo the best embarrassed grin he could manage. “Yeah, but you were totally right about new apartment jitters or whatever. Nothing’s really happened since I got adjusted and started unpacking.”  
  
Leo stared at him for a long moment, and Jason was almost completely convinced that Leo could tell he was lying. Then, Leo shrugged and resumed his work. “Whatevs, dude. But I’m not gonna be one of those people that tells you to not come crying to me when your ass gets haunted. Nope, I’m gonna be the cool guy that’s like, ‘Naaaah bro! It’s all good! Let’s all you an exorcist!’”  
  
“Very cool of you,” Jason replied.  
  
“Right? Anyway, Piper’s probably gonna show up in a few hours, so eat all the junk you can stomach before she gets here,” Leo continued, tweaking another wire and letting out a sound of success. “And yeah, do it all before Percy gets here, ‘cause then you won’t have a whole lot left.”  
  
\---  
  
Jason guessed that Leo was pretending he had fixed the TV. It did work, obviously, but mostly because Nico wasn’t anywhere near it. They all (including Nico, serving as peanut gallery) agreed on playing _The Avengers_ on as background noise while they got things done. Afterwards, a pile of Marvel movies was set up for continual play during the day and evening, which was evidently satisfactory enough to Nico for his end of the night.  
  
“Yeah, don’t worry about me,” he said while Leo was in the bathroom. Jason _had_ been worried, though. He couldn’t speak to Nico while everyone else was there, and even though Jason knew that Nico was used to it, it didn’t seem right. Ignoring someone at a party was just bad manners, even if they were deceased.   
  
“I mean, you should be able to do _something_ ,” Jason stressed, glancing over his shoulder at the bathroom door every few seconds. “I’m not exactly keen on just leaving you sitting in a corner all day.”  
  
“You want me to hang around in your room instead?”  
  
Jason shook his head before raking a hand through his hair. “No, _no_. I already said that wasn’t going to be a thing.”  
  
“Not in those exact words.”  
  
“You’re really technical, you know that?” Jason retorted. He sighed and toyed with the hem of his shirt. “Anyway, pick movies you like or something. Or music. Or hell, break a glass during the party to make things more exciting.”   
  
Nico side-eyed him. “I don’t think you want me to do that,” he deadpanned.  
  
“Okay, no, I was exaggerating. Like if you want to do... _ghost_ things,” he said, the word coming out like it was jammed in his throat. Nico didn’t flinch at it, or really do much at all. Jason took that as a sign to continue. “Do that thing with the back of the neck hairs,” he finished, doing some sort of circus-worthy juggling gesture.  
  
“...What?”  
  
Jason glanced over his shoulder again before lowering his voice even more. He reached up to the back of his own neck and ran his fingers over the short hair there. “You know, when people get freaked out and the hair on the back of their neck stands up? It’s like a trope.”  
  
“Oh,” was all Nico said. “You mean like this?” He reached up, and without touching Jason’s neck, waved his hand over the back of his head. Instantly, the hair stood up and a shudder ran straight down Jason’s spine. If he was going to use tropes even further, it was like someone had poured ice water down his back. He stood up straight and shivered while Nico crossed his arms over his chest and looked somewhat satisfied with himself.   
  
“I’m going to guess you’ve done that before.”  
  
“A few times,” Nico conceded.   
  
“Alright, you get full permission to do that if you get too bored.”  
  
They had a rough agreement by the time Leo got out of the bathroom, but Nico kept to himself all the way up until Piper arrived.  
  
As Leo had predicted, it was a few hours between his own arrival and Piper’s. She came bearing a recyclable grocery bag full of bags of chips, a variety of plastic containers with name brand cookies, and a large bag of kale chips, presumably for herself and Annabeth. She set the bag down before pulling Leo into a hug, and then Jason.  
  
“You’re getting kinda handsy, Beauty Queen,” Leo quipped, but he wasn’t complaining.  
  
“Got my trip booked,” was her answer. “Tomorrow at three.”  
  
It was still a subject that no one was bent on broaching. Jason felt he had already said his goodbyes, but there was the barest sting as a leftover. Apparently, Leo felt it enough to clear his throat and shuffle awkwardly in place.   
  
Piper gave it a moment before putting her hands on her hips and glancing between the two of them. “Oh, c’mon,” she finally said. “This is a housewarming party, not a funeral.”  
  
Jason almost balked at the irony. He heard Nico snort behind him.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Leo replied. “Just rub it in, sister. You’re just reminding me that we’ve got a Loreley’s embargo.”  
  
“That you do,” Piper said like it was a point of pride. “And on that note! Jason, your apartment looks great. No knee or shin kickings as of yet. Keep up the good work.”  
  
“Thanks, mom,” Jason muttered, but grinned despite himself.   
  
“Someone has to look after you, at least while Leo’s around.”  
  
“Yeah,” Leo agreed, nudging him in the side. “Who’s gonna look after you when I’m not here?”  
  
Jason almost glanced over his shoulder at Nico, but stopped himself. Instead, he continued smiling and shrugged. “I think I do pretty good by myself.”  
  
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Piper added before walking back into the kitchen. “Anyway, we should probably make a wall of stuff for Percy to eat his way through when he gets here. At least enough to give Annabeth time to eat something.”  
  
\---  
  
The three (four, Jason mentally added) of them sat in the living room for almost an hour, half-watching Captain America and half-discussing everything else. Leo had no lack of work stories, Piper was already detailing everything about Malibu she was sure she still didn’t like, and Jason was caught between lamenting over the mattress that never was delivered and how he was going to have to work out his new work commute to Nolita. Nico just sat on the floor, his back to the wall, watching them with an expression like a cross between nostalgia and carefully maintained disinterest. Jason didn’t want to be the one to entertain a stereotype, but Nico was just a little bit _too_ Italian to pretend he wasn’t listening. His expression changed even when he didn’t want it to, and more than once, Jason caught Nico’s hands twitching at his sides like he was ready to jump into conversation, gestures and all.   
  
It was a little sad to watch, however. Regardless of how he looked, Nico would have fit in with them just fine. There was no finite appearance shared between all of them, and everyone they ended up being friends with were so vastly different from them that it was hard to lump them all into a group deserving of labels. Leo probably would have come up with some stupid nickname for him, and Piper would have dished out the loving-but-somewhat-harsh care on him. Instead, he was a figurative and literal ghost in their presence, and it made Jason a little melancholy just to watch.   
  
Partway between a discussion about French versus American made clothes dryers, courtesy of Leo, Nico glanced up at the door. “I’m going to guess these are the two people you keep talking about,” he said, exactly at the same time that someone knocked on the door.   
  
Jason got up and strode across the room, opening the door and standing aside. Annabeth came in first, Percy following her like a lost, but very excited puppy. Surprisingly, Annabeth was dressed formally, at least for her. She wore a black tank top with an almost see through gray blouse, and a pair of black dress pants. In sharp contrast, Percy was wearing washed out jeans that had definitely seen better days, and a t-shirt with a cartoon treasure chest and ‘Arrr, I’ve Got The Booty!’ above it.  
  
“Just got off work. I had to go in for an emergency morning shift,” Annabeth said. Then, she gestured at Percy with her thumb. “He just rolled out of bed.”  
  
“Yes, I did,” Percy said proudly.   
  
Jason shut the door behind them as Annabeth kicked off a pair of flats. Percy just stumbled around behind her, trying to toe his sneakers off at the door.   
  
Eventually, Percy gave up after Annabeth sat down on the couch. He sat beside her, apparently deciding to go the normal human route and actually untie his shoes before taking them off. Piper and Leo started a conversation immediately, but all Jason heard was a soft, almost inaudible, “... _Oh._ ”  
  
He turned around to see Nico, still up against the wall, but staring wide-eyed at Percy like had just seen something miraculous (or horrifying) occur. That was saying a lot, considering he was a remarkably tangible ghost.   
  
It took Jason a moment. Or, more correctly, an embarrassingly _long_ moment. He glanced back and forth between Nico and Percy, fortunately with the others being so drawn into conversation to notice it. It was the same look, the _same_ one that Jason was beginning to call the ‘bloodless blush’.   
  
Then, it clicked, and Jason felt like he needed to go back into the kitchen, get out a frying pan, and repeatedly beat himself over the head with it. Instead, he decided to go an equally eloquent route. “Oh,” he echoed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've decided to put all my fun author's notes down here so they don't clutter the upstairs space! Woo! Anyway, I was really hoping to get this chapter out sooner, but real life and family stuff decided it needed to happen faster than I could work. Fortunately, that's all sorted out as best as it could be, and here's the chapter!
> 
> This was actually going to be longer, but I decided to cut the housewarming party in half (more like 1/3 here and 2/3 in the next chapter) for the sake of length. Believe me, this looks far less cluttered than it originally did, but it also means that the next chapter shouldn't take so long in writing. At least, unless something else crazy comes up, which doesn't look too likely now!
> 
> Anyway, thank you for everyone being so patient with me, and as always, thank you for every kudo and comment. It really does mean a lot, especially with all that's happened lately. You guys are the absolute best. <333


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where the party keeps up, Nico gets kind of gross, and Piper gives Jason one last punch of perceptiveness before she leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeey, remember how I said this chapter would be out sooner? Or how I like to say that a lot? Haaahhhh, yeah. But yeah, I was on vacation for a week in no wifi land and I just got back two days ago. I was hoping to finish it before I left, but obviously that didn't happen. Pffff.
> 
> Anyway, thank you again for all the kudos and comments. The comments for last chapter were really interesting and actually gave me a few points I hadn't really thought about. You're all excellent detectives and I humbly request you keep it up. You're all picking my brain and giving me great ideas!
> 
> Also, this chapter has quite a decent dose of angst in what I consider HoH style, in that I kept a certain chapter in mind while writing it. There is definitely a good dose of fluff to follow, but the angst probably won't completely go away. We're dealing with dead kids and emotionally confused living ones. It's always a party.
> 
> Finally, if you're the tag-tracking type on tumblr, the tag I've been using is "#fic: the art of sublimating". I'm also posting updates on my main (radiojamming) as well as my writing blog (schriftstel). I can't promise complete consistency, but heeyyy I think I've proved that already. ;D

There was a long moment where Jason felt like he was frozen to the floor, watching everyone but Nico happily conversing while Nico just looked like he wanted to disappear completely (which as a ghost, didn’t seem too impossible). He watched Percy with a perfect deer-in-the-headlights look before he finally caught sight of Jason and stuttered out something unintelligible and scrunching himself up against the wall even more than he already was.   
  
Unfortunately, Jason couldn’t say anything, so instead, he mouthed ‘later?’. It wasn’t a surprise when Nico shook his head, burrowing himself into his hoodie like it was an instinct. Regardless, Jason was definitely going to ask, even though he figured he knew the answer.  
  
Before Jason could really straighten out his thoughts, Percy glanced over to him with a wide smile. “So, what’d you get this apartment for? Seems pretty upscale compared to the old one.”  
  
“Oh, uh,” Jason started, immediately scratching at the back of his head as means of fidgeting. “Well, it’s one of those places where my water’s paid for, so I have to pay electric and gas and all that, so I guess the total’s like six hundred a month?”  
  
“ _Holy,_ ” Percy said at the same time Annabeth let out a gasp and looked at Jason like he had grown a second head. “Are you _sure_ that’s what you’re paying?”  
  
Jason nodded before looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “I mean, unless you want to count my deposit, but even that wasn’t bad. Well, okay, _two_ deposits. One for the cat.”  
  
“That’s ridiculous!” Percy exclaimed. “Dude, that’s like what we’re paying over in Brooklyn, and we only have one bedroom.”  
  
“His apartment might be haunted, though,” Leo added with a sly grin.   
  
“It’s not,” Jason said stiffly just as Nico stared pointedly at the floor.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what he _says,_ ” Leo continued, putting his hands behind his head and leaning up against the back of his chair. “It’s totally haunted, right, Pipes?”  
  
Piper, the traitor, nodded. “His TV was freaking out a few days ago.”  
  
“ _Power surge,_ ” Jason stressed.  
  
“Nope,” Leo said easily. “I checked out your wiring. It’s good as gold, man. I think you’ve got some bonafide paranormal business going on.”  
  
“Still,” Percy said, glancing around the room. “Ghost or not, it’s a pretty sweet place for what you’re paying.”  
  
Annabeth nodded in agreement. “We were looking for an apartment around here last year when I got my job, since it would have been nice to live closer to work. But all the places around here were in the thousands, _especially_ for something as nice as this. I’m surprised you’re not paying double.”  
  
“I mean, they might add extra charges later,” Jason tried. “They did back in California.”  
  
“I doubt it,” Piper replied. “I thought you looked over the contract pretty well. I think a place like this would be more cut and dry about their policies, right?”  
  
“Maybe it’s like those hotel commercials,” Percy suggested. “Like Expedia or whatever. You know, when they say they can’t sell enough hotel rooms so they drop the price and run it through a site like that?”  
  
Jason didn’t want to mention the limited time that was on the advertisement. For that matter, he didn’t want to add that someone had died in his apartment some year or two before he moved in. Instead, he tried his best to give an unassuming smile and agree. “Yeah,” he finally said. “To be fair, the real estate agent seemed pretty desperate to rent it out. Maybe there’s some contract with the landlord.”  
  
“You’re a terrible liar,” Nico added from his corner.  
  
It appeared to be on the contrary, at least for Percy. “Maybe we need to call this guy,” he said, playfully nudging Annabeth in the side. She just swatted at his hand and laughed.  
  
Fortunately, the conversation shifted to Leo excitedly asking about a new air conditioner in Percy’s apartment, and if there was some competitor repair store in Prospect Heights. Jason was thankful for the pause and took the opportunity to shuffle into the kitchen.   
  
As soon as he was out of everyone’s sight, Jason took in a deep breath and massaged his forehead. Honestly, he didn’t understand why everything suddenly felt so stressful. It would have been easy to do as Nico said and just pretend he wasn’t there. It would have been even easier to act like he had never seen Nico at all, to keep up the ‘apartment might be haunted’ joke, but for some reason, Jason couldn’t do it. He couldn’t figure out _why_ , since it absolutely would have been easier.  
  
He guessed it was a combination of things. The first thing being that as he had reflected on, it felt wrong to leave Nico out and pretend he didn’t exist. Nico had at least explained just enough about himself to leave Jason the clues to suggest that he hadn’t really had anyone in life. Something about him just exuded loneliness, and Jason felt some innate need to prevent that from happening so long as he lived there.   
  
Then, there was that moment earlier. Nico’s mixed horrified-amazed look that spelled out a lot more than Jason had expected. Somehow, he guessed, Nico knew Percy. How was still yet to be figured out, but it was obvious. There was that inkling of familiarity, as carefully composed as it could be through shock. Whether or not Percy knew him in return was impossible to know, since Jason wasn’t going to just waltz back out into the living room and ask Percy if he knew a now-dead nursing student.   
  
But what was more than that, Nico _liked_ Percy. At the least, there was fondness, and at the most (if Jason was grasping at straws, which he definitely was), there was honest-to-goodness affection. It was hard to guess from a ten second occurrence, but that was why Jason was bent on asking Nico about it later.   
  
In a whirlwind of confusion, Jason almost jumped out of his skin when Piper turned the corner into the kitchen.  
  
She frowned at him and immediately put her hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling okay? You’ve been looking kind of flushed since we got here.”  
  
“I’m fine, Piper. Just...” he trailed off, not knowing how to continue. ‘ _Yeah, Piper, there’s a ghost in my apartment and I think he’s got a thing for Percy. What would you do about that?_ ’ was one option, but instead he just smiled in the most ridiculously feeble way and shrugged. “New apartment jitters haven’t worn off.”  
  
She put her hand back down at her side and rolled her eyes. “You really are a bad liar,” she said, and Jason nearly flinched at how much she sounded like Nico. “I know you better than that. Something’s bothering you.”  
  
Leave it to Piper to be perceptive, or more to Jason for being as transparent as Saran wrap. Either way, he lowered his shoulders in defeat. “Can we talk about it later?” he pleaded, his voice sounding too thin for his liking. He didn’t know exactly what they would talk about, but it was better than lying to her even more. That never ended well based on his experiences.   
  
Piper put her hands on her hips and studied him for a moment. “Sure,” she finally said before turning around and opening the refrigerator. “We can set the food out first.”  
  
“Alright,” he replied, taking the salad tray from her as she handed it over.   
  
\---  
  
As everyone predicted, Percy ate his way through half of the salad tray, a semi-disgusting mixture of cheese, apples, and caramel, and he started in on the walking tacos before Annabeth managed to stop him with a commanding, “You’re going to make yourself sick! Sit down for a second!”  
  
Fortunately, he did sit down long enough for her to get something to eat. Percy instead started up a rather enthusiastic story about his job while everyone else started making plates for themselves.  
  
“So, like, we had a group of middle schoolers come in yesterday, and you know how middle schoolers think they’re all cool and stuff? Yeah, so these three boys are hanging out to the side near the ray tank and I’m in charge of it, and they’re trying to be all awesome and stand-offish which isn’t even that cool because what are they? Like, _twelve?_ So I point to one of them and I’m all, ‘Hey! Do you want to feed one of these? They’re totally harmless.’”  
  
“Please tell me they weren’t stingrays,” Piper said from the dining room.  
  
“Nah, _nahhh_ , just little mantas. They’re like sea puppies,” Percy said with a grin. “So anyway, the kid comes up like all, ‘yeah I’m so cool, what’ and I hand him the food and tell him what to do. I’m like, ‘Oh, just put it on the surface a little so they can see it!’ He does it and one of the rays comes up like _wooosh!_ and jumps out a little bit and makes this splash and the kid _screams_. Like, mister macho eighth grader nearly pees himself.” At that, Percy broke out into hysterical laughter, which proved to be infectious enough for Leo to snort into his Dr. Pepper and for Piper to have to hide a laugh behind a celery stick.  
  
Jason couldn’t help but grin, especially when Annabeth rolled her eyes. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nico duck into his hoodie again.   
  
Curiosity really was getting the best of him, and even though the party had only just started, Jason had the momentary temptation to usher everyone out. Of course, he wouldn’t have done that, especially since it was Piper’s last night with all of them until she got back from Malibu.   
  
And speaking of her, she started sending him weird looks after Percy had finished up his story. It was almost like she was trying to affirm he was okay. Not that he really needed any affirmation, but he supposed he could understand the concern.   
  
After everyone got something from the kitchen, they sat in a rough oval between the living room and the dining room. Suddenly, the conversation shifted back in on Jason.  
  
“So,” Annabeth started, her attention diverted between Jason and Percy precariously balancing a cup of soda on his lap. “I kind of missed out on a lot of hangout time because of work, but how exactly did you end up in New York?”  
  
Jason replied at the same time Leo took on the look of a proud father. “That’s kind of Leo and Piper’s fault,” Jason said. “You know how I’m from California, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Yeah, so, I lived outside Sonoma for a few years, and it kind of sucked. Just did a whole lot of nothing for a long time until Leo and Piper just show up out of the blue.”  
  
“Met at a camp,” Leo added, beaming.  
  
Jason rolled his eyes and nodded. “I was raised in kind of a group home, but they had this joint summer camp with a big national youth organization, and I was asked to be a counselor. Just as it happens, so were Leo and Piper.”  
  
Leo nodded, abandoning his spaghetti just long enough to lean back in his chair and cross his arms over his chest. “Yeah, the organization’s _huge_. Like they do a lot with city kids so they get off the streets, and I was part of that for awhile when I was a kid. There were fundraisers every year to go to this camp out in California, but I finally got to do it for _way_ less once I turned eighteen and got to be a chaperone instead. The center here paid for half of my trip and I was pretty geeked out about it.”  
  
“And I was doing it for community service,” Piper said, although she didn’t sound half as thrilled.  
  
“So, anyway,” Jason continued. “Leo, Piper, and I met and started hanging out because our cabins always had activities scheduled at the same time, and we didn’t really have a whole lot to do except chill out for an hour at a time. So, we got to talking and I found out they were from New York.”  
  
“And he was a New York fanboy,” Leo interjected.  
  
“ _No,_ ” Jason shot back with a glare. Then, he settled back into his chair and grinned. “I mean, I watched a lot of movies in my spare time, so I guess my idea of New York was pretty rose-tinted, but it was still cool to hear about from someone who lived there. Anyway, camp finished up in a week but Leo and I still kept contact for a few months after that. I got my money from the state, got to pick my own place, and Leo shows up on Skype trying to convince me that New York’s awesome and Piper’s in the background cheering me on, so I ended up here within six months.”  
  
“We were like his New York coaches,” Piper said with a laugh. “He didn’t know what to do with himself.”  
  
Jason feigned insult before rolling his eyes again. “Maybe a little,” he conceded.  
  
“Although we knew we did pretty good by him when he could finally name off his top five favorite brunch places,” Leo said, and Piper nodded in agreement.   
  
Annabeth smiled throughout their entire exchange before reaching over and patting Percy on the back. “See? Small world, right?”  
  
Percy quirked a grin before sliding an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, we met at a camp, too. Although not as counselors so much as dorky preteens.”  
  
“ _You_ were the only dorky preteen,” Annabeth retorted, playfully punching him in the shoulder.  
  
Jason felt like he was going to laugh until he felt something like the temporal manifestation of a twig cracking. It was like all the air in the room _snapped_ , leaving him with a dull ache in his chest. Immediately, his attention was drawn to Nico, now standing and leaning against the wall and watching the entire scene with an air of discomfort. However, it wasn’t so much the atmosphere as his appearance that jarred Jason.  
  
The thing about Nico was that it was hard to discern whether or not he was actually dead. He had said it, and it was obvious that no one but Jason could see him, but he seemed so tangible and _alive_ that Jason couldn’t really stick the label of ‘dead’ onto him. That is, not until that moment.  
  
Suddenly, it was more than obvious that the person who once was Nico was a corpse. His face was significantly skeletal, pale and drawn with skin stretched thinly over his skull. His eyes were more sunken in, the half-moon shapes under his eyes now full circles. The shadowed parts of his face looked like purplish bruises, and what skin wasn’t waxy pale looked mottled. In short, he looked absolutely terrifying and it took every iota of Jason’s courage not to jump right out of his chair at the sight of him. Instead, he petered his gasp down into a deep draw of air before forcing a smile and pretending like he hadn’t seen anything.  
  
At that moment, Jason could only _guess_ why Nico looked like that, although Nico didn’t seem to notice the physical change at all. If it wasn’t for his appearance, he would have looked like some moody teenager keeping distance at a party. But it had jarred Jason enough that he was suddenly fighting for words, only managing a weak, “Yeah.”  
  
Again, it must not have been enough to break them out of their conversation. Percy and Annabeth continued joking with each other from the couch while Leo laughed (mostly at Percy). Only Piper was perceptive enough to glance over at Jason with a look of concern. She didn’t say anything, but it was clear that it was another thing to be saved for later, which was now starting to feel like something to be feared.  
  
Eventually, Piper made some excuse about needing to wash dishes, but tugged on Jason’s shirt sleeve as she passed him. He frowned but got up regardless, obediently following her. She quickly gathered up the dishes scattered around before putting them in the sink, drizzling them with dish soap, and running hot water over them. Then, she turned to face him, hands on her hips and a carefully constructed no-nonsense expression on her face. In the living room, Leo had started up a movie, so it was clear that they wouldn’t be interrupted or overheard.  
  
“Okay,” she started. “Tell me what’s going on. You looked pretty freaked out back there and I want to know _why_.”  
  
Jason found himself at an impasse. On one hand, he could tell Piper what actually happened and risk her thinking he had gone right out of his mind and grabbed some lunch on the way. On the other hand, he could concoct some half-built lie and have to deal with the fact he did lie to her. Neither seemed appealing and both of them had been on his mind for the past few days.  
  
The thing was, there was a chance that she wouldn’t think he was crazy. He had plenty of details about Nico, enough to be descriptive about the situation and flesh it out. On top of that, Piper, via her grandfather, was quite the queen of ghost stories herself. How much she actually believed was unknown, but she had an imagination.   
  
He deliberated it just long enough for Piper to clear her throat and give him an expectant look that denoted he was taking too long. Ultimately, he chose the closest thing to a middle road he could manage.  
  
“I just...” he began, taking in a deep breath while trying to sort his thoughts. “This is just a lot to take in and I think it’s messing with me.”  
  
Piper carefully looked him over, and the expectancy fell back into concern. “What do you mean?” she asked quietly.  
  
“Like, you know about my sister and all.”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“I know it’s been awhile, but it’s not any easier to get over? On top of this being the first time I’ve actually lived alone. I just don’t think... I don’t think I’m in the best frame of mind right now,” he finished, reaching up and rubbing at the back of his neck. He felt the familiar strained tug sensation in his chest, usually coming up at any mention of his sister.   
  
“Okay, what do you mean by ‘frame of mind’?” she asked, still studying him like an over-concerned mother.  
  
He thought about Nico, thought about how he fit like a shadow into every empty corner in the house. It wasn’t hard to shift his appearance to the label of something _else_ , if only for the moment.  
  
“I’ve been hallucinating a lot,” he finally said, lowering his hand to cross his arms over his chest.   
  
Piper frowned and reached over to turn the water off. “Jason...” she said softly. “How long has this been going on?”  
  
“Since I moved in.”  
  
She looked uncomfortable, but Jason knew her well enough to know that it wasn’t so much because of him. Even when they had been dating, Piper was excellent at rolling with the punches that came to her because of his life. Both of them had a lot to sort through, and they had done well together. It left him feeling a little sour with regret, but that was hardly new.   
  
“Do you want me to stay here? I can cancel my flight,” she said, watching him like she was waiting for some new fluctuation.  
  
Jason shook his head. “No, you need to go be with your dad. I just need to learn how to handle this.”  
  
“You don’t have to do that by yourself,” she replied.  
  
“I... I know that,” he said, lowering his eyes. “But I’m old enough now that I’m going to have to learn how to navigate through this without expecting someone to be there.”  
  
“That’s how you’ve _always_ done things,” Piper stressed. “You’re great at being a rock for everyone else. Let someone else do that for you.”  
  
She wasn’t wrong. Even when he was still at the group home in Sonoma, he served as some kind of junior psychologist, listening and filtering through everyone’s problems. No one came into the home unscathed. They had a social worker and a team of people legitimately trained to handle adolescent psychology, but some people needed someone their own age, someone who didn’t approach things so clinically and actually understood what their lives were like. No, Jason never wanted to be shoved into the position of leader, but he was the last person to leave someone behind, especially when they needed to talk to someone so badly.   
  
Still, as much as he kept his own issues carefully maintained, there was no doubt that there was still something left. Something he had never really wanted to wade through. Piper understood this, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if she already knew it. By how she sounded, she definitely did.  
  
“I need to adjust,” was all he managed to say, but his tone sounded so stiff that he nearly winced at it.  
  
There was a long moment where neither of them said anything. Piper just watched him, and Jason had trouble meeting her eye-to-eye.   
  
At long last, Piper let out a sigh and turned to face the sink. “Just promise me that you’ll call me if something happens. I can be on the first flight out.”  
  
He wouldn’t do that. “I promise,” he said regardless.  
  
“And...” Piper trailed off, stopping to roll up her sleeves. “I know you probably don’t want to do this, but... maybe think about getting a roommate. Not necessarily someone you’re friends with, but just so you don’t have to be alone.”  
  
Again, his thoughts went straight back to Nico. He felt something like a wry smile come to his face. “I’ve honestly thought about it,” he replied.  
  
\---  
  
After the dishes were done (Jason’s hands now being essentially drained of every drop of moisture they once had), Piper and Jason went back to sit with everyone else. Jason noticed how Piper stayed a little closer to him. Jason also noticed that Nico was no longer in the room, but there was an uneasy feeling that came with that. He was nearby, and Jason hazarded a guess that he was in the master bedroom.   
  
As Jason found a comfortable niche on the couch and Piper sat cross-legged on the floor, Annabeth reached across Percy to hand Jason a glossy blue piece of cardstock. He accepted it with a quirked eyebrow and Annabeth just smiled in a graceful-but-sheepish way. “Percy and I couldn’t agree on _exactly_ what to get you,” she said like an excuse. “Everything he picked was blue.”  
  
“Everything _she_ picked was all super complicated and expensive,” Percy retorted. “Like, who needs a volcanic stone mortar and pestle?”  
  
“It would make good guacamole,” Annabeth shot back. “I studied it.”  
  
“Of course you did,” Percy said, settling for putting his feet up on her lap.  
  
“Gross,” was all she said, but she didn’t push him off.  
  
Jason just grinned and both of them and opened the cardstock to reveal a fifty dollar IKEA gift card. He laughed and folded it closed, reaching over to give Percy an awkwardly-angled high five. “Thank you! It’s definitely going to get some good use.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” they said at the same time. Annabeth followed it up with, “They have a lot of glassware on sale right now.”  
  
“Like he’s gunning for glassware,” Percy added.  
  
She rolled her eyes and pinched one of Percy’s toes, effectively making him both yelp and immediately shut up.  
  
Piper snorted and glanced over at Leo. “Okay, they got him a gift card, and I got him the cat. You’ve got a lot to live up to, Leo.”  
  
Leo stuttered for a second before ducking his head down and fiddling with his shirt sleeve. “Uh, a coupon for the repair shop? I mean, you’re gonna break somethin’ here soon.”  
  
“Thanks for the confidence,” Jason jested back.   
  
For the rest of the evening, conversation was divided between talking about the movie, the apartment, and anything else that seemed to come up. It was comfortable, and Jason realized how much he was going to miss it. Piper would be gone for awhile, Leo had his own life to build and live with Calypso, and Percy and Annabeth were a borough away with their own lives. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t still keep in contact, as he definitely would. It just felt like a housewarming party as well as a sendoff.   
  
Eventually, Percy and Annabeth had to leave as both of them had work in the morning. Leo left a little while later, patting Jason on the shoulder and leaving him with advice to call a paranormal investigator sometime in the coming week. Finally, Piper was left, and Nico by proxy.   
  
The sun was just setting by the time he and Piper finished cleaning up. When the last leftover had foil on top of it, and the last dish was set on the drying rack, Piper put her hands on her hips and looked around in satisfaction.  
  
“Okay, looks good. Not leaving you with a pigsty,” she said. Then she turned to him and smiled. “So, I’ll call as soon as I get to Malibu. And don’t worry, I’ll keep the time change in mind.”  
  
Jason smiled in return, but he could still tell how worried she was. She had said her goodbyes before, but now she just seemed downright reluctant.   
  
“Hey, don’t worry about me,” he assured. “I’m a big kid now. I pay taxes and everything.”  
  
“I know, but...” Again, she trailed off, the smile fading a little. “I’ll stop worrying about you when you give me a good reason to.”  
  
“I’ll try my best,” he promised.  
  
Piper gave him one last hug before she opened the door. “Talk to you tomorrow,” she said. “And don’t forget about looking into a roommate.”  
  
“I will. Have a good trip,” he replied.  
  
The door shut behind her and Jason was once again left with an empty apartment. Or, not completely empty. Now that everyone was gone and the place was cleaned up and quiet, there was an entirely different atmosphere settling through it. It was dull and muted, and once again, Jason felt like the apartment was on the barest incline, like everything was off by a inch.   
  
He looked at his bedroom door, frowning and trying to reason out what he was going to do. It wouldn’t have been such a problem if Nico hadn’t... _changed_ earlier. Jason was still having a hard time getting the image out of his head. His mind started to set up a mantra, getting louder and louder the more he considered walking into the room to talk to Nico.  
  
 _He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.  
  
_ Why it was just starting to really hit Jason at that moment was beyond him. It was like his acceptance came in two very weird stages. First, there was a ghost. He understood that, accepted it pretty well given the situation. Maybe a little _too_ well.  
  
Now the second part; that ghost was indeed someone who had died. Jason could practically hear the voice of the group home’s caretaker, old and cracked like worn and dried leather.  
  
“ _The dead are much wiser than we’ll ever be. They know what not to do._ ”  
  
In retrospect, everything he had said to Nico already just sounded stupid to him. What did he actually know about the guy? What could he have possibly understood about him? Jason didn’t have the faintest idea what being dead was like. He didn’t know what Nico felt or if he regretted anything, although Jason guessed there were some things on his list. And there Jason was, trying to coerce him into being social somehow. Getting involved with the living like he was one of them.  
  
Jason literally had no idea what he was trying to accomplish. Unless that thing was trying to somehow have more friends, regardless of life status.  
  
He grimaced when he realized that all he was doing was stalling. The door was still there, separating him from someone who couldn’t decide if he wanted to look like a zombie or some moody high school kid. And no, Nico’s business was hardly his, nor did he have a huge reason to know. Natural curiosity, yes, next to the fact that he was in Jason’s apartment constantly. But Jason wasn’t meant to barge in on his life or lack thereof. But, he did eventually have to go to bed, and by connection, that meant facing the ghost closest to it. The couch suddenly seemed very appealing.  
  
He drew in a deep breath before clinging to the last little bit of resolve he had. Zombie or not, he had to talk to Nico eventually, rather than standing in the middle of his living room like an idiot.   
  
With hesitance, he pushed the door open, instantly relieved to see Nico sitting on the floor beside the bed, definitely not looking like a corpse. What quelled the relief was how upset he looked, or worse, how direly he was attempting to hide it. All it managed to come across as was someone trying to hide the fact they had eaten something sour, and just looking more miserable because of it.  
  
“...Nico?” Jason tried, closing the door behind him.  
  
Nico looked up at him for just a moment before going back to staring at the floor. “Sorry,” was all he said.  
  
“Sorry for what?”  
  
“Whatever I did that freaked you out.”  
  
Jason frowned and sat on the edge of his bed, crossing his ankles over each other. “I don’t think you meant it,” he tried to assure.  
  
Nico just shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t say anything, but the connotation was clear.  
  
“Do you... Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
More silence, and then Nico rested his head against the wall behind him. “World’s pretty small,” he said.   
  
Jason waited for him to elaborate, but as he was quickly learning, that was something Nico didn’t do. “So, you knew Annabeth and Percy,” he said, reminding himself to keep a habit of filling in the blanks that Nico left.  
  
Nico nodded.  
  
“How?”  
  
That sour look came back and Nico cleared his throat, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor. “You weren’t the only one sent to camp for having problems.”  
  
“The same camp they were talking about?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Jason knew he was going to step straight into dangerous territory, but he went on regardless. “And you liked Percy.”  
  
The same snap in the air occurred, and the room’s temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Evidently, there was enough of a change for Jason to hear the air conditioner clicking off. That wasn’t his main focus, so much as watching the bones in Nico’s wrist become more pronounced, his skin getting waxy and mottled again. His fingernail beds turned stark white and Jason didn’t have to see his face to figure that the bruising and dark circles around his eyes had reappeared. The mere sight of it made him feel nauseous, but he swallowed hard and steeled himself.   
  
It was hard to do, however. Jason had no idea how to describe it otherwise, but it felt like the room was filling with death itself. The shadows seemed darker and longer, the city outside his windows going out light by light without really changing at all, the air smelling stale, the entire atmosphere just as cold and lifeless as Nico looked.   
  
“Hey,” Jason interjected, fighting against how heavy his jaw suddenly felt or how his throat felt like something had congealed inside of it. “Nico, snap out of it.”  
  
Naturally, Nico didn’t.  
  
“It’s not a huge issue,” Jason tried again. “I completely understand, okay? It’s definitely not anything to be ashamed of.”  
  
The entire room seemed to freeze, and even Jason had a hard time moving for a moment. Nico just held stock still, eyes hard and glassy. “You have no idea,” he said, his voice sounding so distant and hollow that Jason wondered if he had opened his mouth at all. “You don’t understand anything about it. You don’t know anything about me.”  
  
“No, I don’t,” Jason agreed, exasperated. “But I would understand better if you actually _told_ me.”  
  
It wasn’t his business, he reminded himself. There was no reason to ask, no reason to know. But at the same time, there _was_. Jason had had actual dreams about it, even if he could barely remember what they were. The fact that Nico could manage to alter an entire room from being upset was another thing. Something was keeping him in the apartment, and it was so strong and emotionally demanding that there was nothing Nico could do about it.   
  
“I don’t know what I could do to help you,” he continued, ignoring how exhausted he sounded. “But I’ll do it. Whatever it is that you need. Listening, or running out and finding things, or just sitting here. I don’t really care what it is.”  
  
He didn’t know why he was saying it, but there were a lot of things he didn’t know. He didn’t know why he chose the apartment in the Upper East Side when there were dozens of apartments for the same price in familiar neighborhoods. Why did he really move to New York? Why did he leave an entire lifetime behind in California for an unfamiliar apartment in an unfamiliar neighborhood in an unfamiliar state? He couldn’t accurately cite fate, or anything else for that matter other than some persuasive friends, but there wasn’t much else he could explain. He just didn’t know, and somehow, he felt like Nico knew just as much.  
  
Nico stayed silent and still for a long while before he shifted just enough to make side-eye contact with Jason. His eyes were still glassy, but they had some focus at least. “I’ll... think about it,” he said, sounding just as exhausted as Jason felt. “Just need some time.”  
  
As he said it, the room felt like it went back to some semblance of normal. The city came back into full clear view, the shadows looked normal, and Nico looked less... dead.   
  
“Okay,” Jason replied, unsure how else to proceed.  
  
Nico looked back down at the floor and Jason watched with some fascination as Nico filled out again, albeit not by much. “I haven’t really talked to anyone in awhile,” he said.  
  
At first, Jason thought he meant he hadn’t talked to anyone since he died, which was understandable. It took him a moment longer to realize, or at least to guess, that Nico meant even longer than since his death.   
  
“That’s fine,” Jason said sympathetically. Fortunately, Nico didn’t react much to that. “Take all the time you need.”


End file.
